One of Ours
Book II: Enid
Chapter XII
0n the night before his wedding Claude went to bed early. He had been dashing
about with Ralph all day in the car, making final preparations, and was worn
out. He fell asleep almost at once. The women of the household could not so
easily forget the great event of tomorrow. After the supper dishes were washed,
Mahailey clambered up to the attic to get the quilt she had so long been saving
for a wedding present for Claude. She took it out of the chest, unfolded it, and
counted the stars in the pattern—counting was an accomplishment she was proud
of—before she wrapped it up. It was to go down to the mill house with the other
presents tomorrow. Mrs. Wheeler went to bed many times that night. She kept
thinking of things that ought to be looked after; getting up and going to make
sure that Claude's heavy underwear had been put into his trunk, against the
chance of cold in the mountains; or creeping downstairs to see that the six
roasted chickens which were to help out at the wedding supper were securely
covered from the cats. As she went about these tasks, she prayed constantly. She
had not prayed so long and fervently since the battle of the Marne.
Early the next morning Ralph loaded the big car with the presents and baskets
of food and ran down to the Royces'. Two motors from town were already standing
in the mill yard; they had brought a company of girls who came with all the June
roses in Frankfort to trim the house for the wedding. When Ralph tooted his
horn, half-a-dozen of them ran out to greet him, reproaching him because he had
not brought his brother along. Ralph was immediately pressed into service. He
carried the step-ladder wherever he was told, drove nails, and wound thorny
sprays of rambler roses around the pillars between the front and back parlours,
making the arch under which the ceremony was to take place.
Gladys Farmer had not been able to leave her classes at the High School to
help in this friendly work, but at eleven o'clock a livery automobile drove up,
laden with white and pink peonies from her front yard, and bringing a box of
hothouse flowers she had ordered for Enid from Hastings. The girls admired them,
but declared that Gladys was extravagant, as usual; the flowers from her own
yard would really have been enough. The car was driven by a lank, ragged boy who
worked about the town garage, and who was called "Silent Irv," because nobody
could ever get a word out of him. He had almost no voice at all,—a thin little
squeak in the top of his throat, like the gasping whisper of a medium in her
trance state. When he came to the front door, both arms full of peonies, he
managed to wheeze out:
"These are from Miss Farmer. There are some more down there."
The girls went back to his car with him, and he took out a square box, tied
up with white ribbons and little silver bells, containing the bridal bouquet.
"How did you happen to get these?" Ralph asked the thin boy. "I was to go to
town for them."
The messenger swallowed. "Miss Farmer told me if there were any other flowers
at the station marked for here, I should bring them along."
"That was nice of her." Ralph thrust his hand into his trousers pocket. "How
much? I'll settle with you before I forget."
A pink flush swept over the boy's pale face,—a delicate face under ragged
hair, contracted by a kind of shrinking unhappiness. His eyes were always
half-closed, as if he did not want to see the world around him, or to be seen by
it. He went about like somebody in a dream. "Miss Farmer," he whispered, "has
paid me."
"Well, she thinks of everything!" exclaimed one of the girls. "You used to go
to school to Gladys, didn't you, Irv?"
"Yes, mam." He got into his car without opening the door, slipping like an
eel round the steering-rod, and drove off.
The girls followed Ralph up the gravel walk toward the house. One whispered
to the others: "Do you suppose Gladys will come out tonight with Bayliss
Wheeler? I always thought she had a pretty warm spot in her heart for Claude,
myself."
Some one changed the subject. "I can't get over hearing Irv talk so much.
Gladys must have put a spell on him."
"She was always kind to him in school," said the girl who had questioned the
silent boy. "She said he was good in his studies, but he was so frightened he
could never recite. She let him write out the answers at his desk."
Ralph stayed for lunch, playing about with the girls until his mother
telephoned for him. "Now I'll have to go home and look after my brother, or
he'll turn up tonight in a striped shirt."
"Give him our love," the girls called after him, "and tell him not to be
late."
As he drove toward the farm, Ralph met Dan, taking Claude's trunk into town.
He slowed his car. "Any message?" he called.
Dan grinned. "Naw. I left him doin' as well as could be expected."
Mrs. Wheeler met Ralph on the stairs. "He's up in his room. He complains his
new shoes are too tight. I think it's nervousness. Perhaps he'll let you shave
him; I'm sure he'll cut himself. And I wish the barber hadn't cut his hair so
short, Ralph. I hate this new fashion of shearing men behind the ears. The back
of his neck is the ugliest part of a man." She spoke with such resentment that
Ralph broke into a laugh.
"Why, Mother, I thought all men looked alike to you! Anyhow, Claude's no
beauty."
"When will you want your bath? I'll have to manage so that everybody won't be
calling for hot water at once." She turned to Mr. Wheeler who sat writing a
check at the secretary. "Father, could you take your bath now, and be out of the
way?"
"Bath?" Mr. Wheeler shouted, "I don't want any bath! I'm not going to be
married tonight. I guess we don't have to boil the whole house for Enid."
Ralph snickered and shot upstairs. He found Claude sitting on the bed, with
one shoe off and one shoe on. A pile of socks lay scattered on the rug. A
suitcase stood open on one chair and a black travelling bag on another.
"Are you sure they're too small?" Ralph asked.
"About four sizes."
"Well, why didn't you get them big enough?"
"I did. That shark in Hastings worked off another pair on me when I wasn't
looking. That's all right," snatching away the shoe his brother had picked up to
examine. "I don't care, so long as I can stand in them. .You'd better go
telephone the depot and ask if the train's on time."
"They won't know yet. It's seven hours till it's due."
"Then telephone later. But find out, somehow. I don't want to stand around
that station, waiting for the train."
Ralph whistled. Clearly, his young man was going to be hard to manage. He
proposed a bath as a soothing measure. No, Claude had had his bath. Had he,
then, packed his suitcase?
"How the devil can I pack it when I don't know what I'm going to put on?"
"You'll put on one shirt and one pair of socks. I'm going to get some of this
stuff out of the way for you." Ralph caught up a handful of socks and fell to
sorting them. Several had bright red spots on the toe. He began to laugh.
"I know why your shoe hurts, you've cut your foot!"
Claude sprang up as if a hornet had stung him. "Will you get out of here," he
shouted, "and let me alone?"
Ralph vanished. He told his mother he would dress at once, as they might have
to use force with Claude at the last moment. The wedding ceremony was to be at
eight, supper was to follow, and Claude and Enid were to leave Frankfort at
10:25, on the Denver express. At six o'clock, when Ralph knocked at his
brother's door, he found him shaved and brushed, and dressed, except for his
coat. His tucked shirt was not rumpled, and his tie was properly knotted.
Whatever pain they concealed, his patent leather shoes were smooth and
glistening and resolutely pointed.
"Are you packed?" Ralph asked in astonishment.
"Nearly. I wish you'd go over things and make them look a little neater, if
you can. I'd hate to have a girl see the inside of that suitcase, the way it is.
Where shall I put my cigars? They'll make everything smell, wherever I put them.
All my clothes seem to smell of cooking, or starch, or something. I don't know
what Mahailey does to them," he ended bitterly.
Ralph looked outraged. "Well, of all ingratitude! Mahailey's been ironing
your damned old shirts for a week!"
"Yes, yes, I know. Don't rattle me. I forgot to put any handkerchiefs in my
trunk, so you'll have to get the whole bunch in somewhere."
Mr. Wheeler appeared in the doorway, his Sunday black trousers gallowsed up
high over a white shirt, wafting a rich odor of bayrum from his tumbled hair. He
held a thin folded paper delicately between his thick fingers.
"Where is your bill-book, son?"
Claude caught up his discarded trousers and extracted a square of leather
from the pocket. His father took it and placed the bit of paper inside with the
bank notes. "You may want to pick up some trifle your wife fancies," he said.
"Have you got your railroad tickets in here? Here is your trunk check Dan
brought back. Don't forget, I've put it in with your tickets and marked it C.
W., so you'll know which is your check and which is Enid's."
"Yes, sir. Thank you, sir."
Claude had already drawn from the bank all the money he would need. This
additional bank check was Mr. Wheeler's admission that he was sorry for some
sarcastic remarks he had made a few days ago, when he discovered that Claude had
reserved a stateroom on the Denver express. Claude had answered curtly that when
Enid and her mother went to Michigan they always had a stateroom, and he wasn't
going to ask her to travel less comfortably with him.
At seven o'clock the Wheeler family set out in the two cars that stood
waiting by the windmill. Mr. Wheeler drove the big Cadillac, and Ralph took
Mahailey and Dan in the Ford. When they reached the mill house the outer yard
was already black with motors, and the porch and parlours were full of people
talking and moving about.
Claude went directly upstairs. Ralph began to seat the guests, arranging the
folding chairs in such a way as to leave a passage from the foot of the stairs
to the floral arch he had constructed that morning. The preacher had his Bible
in his hand and was standing under the light, hunting for his chapter. Enid
would have preferred to have Mr. Weldon come down from Lincoln to marry her, but
that would have wounded Mr. Snowberry deeply. After all, he was her minister,
though he was not eloquent and persuasive like Arthur Weldon. He had fewer
English words at his command than most human beings, and even those did not come
to him readily. In his pulpit he sought for them and struggled with them until
drops of perspiration rolled from his forehead and fell upon his coarse, matted
brown beard. But he believed what he said, and language was so little an
accomplishment with him that he was not tempted to say more than he believed. He
had been a drummer boy in the Civil War, on the losing side, and he was a
simple, courageous man.
Ralph was to be both usher and best man. Gladys Farmer could not be one of
the bridesmaids because she was to play the wedding march. At eight o'clock Enid
and Claude came downstairs together, conducted by Ralph and followed by four
girls dressed in white, like the bride. They took their places under the arch
before the preacher. He began with the chapter from Genesis about the creation
of man, and Adam's rib, reading in a laboured manner, as if he did not quite
know why he had selected that passage and was looking for something he did not
find. His nose-glasses kept falling off and dropping upon the open book.
Throughout this prolonged fumbling Enid stood calm, looking at him respectfully,
very pretty in her short veil. Claude was so pale that he looked
unnatural,—nobody had ever seen him like that before. His face, between his
very black clothes and his smooth, sandy hair, was white and severe, and he
uttered his responses in a hollow voice. Mahailey, at the back of the room, in a
black hat with green gooseberries on it, was standing, in order to miss nothing.
She watched Mr. Snowberry as if she hoped to catch some visible sign of the
miracle he was performing. She always wondered just what it was the preacher did
to make the wrongest thing in the world the rightest thing in the world.
When it was over, Enid went upstairs to put on her travelling dress, and
Ralph and Gladys began seating the guests for supper. Just twenty minutes later
Enid came down and took her place beside Claude at the head of the long table.
The company rose and drank the bride's health in grape-juice punch. Mr. Royce,
however, while the guests were being seated, had taken Mr. Wheeler down to the
fruit cellar, where the two old friends drank off a glass of well-seasoned
Kentucky whiskey, and shook hands. When they came back to the table, looking
younger than when they withdrew, the preacher smelled the tang of spirits and
felt slighted. He looked disconsolately into his ruddy goblet and thought about
the marriage at Cana. He tried to apply his Bible literally to life and, though
he didn't dare breathe it aloud in these days, he could never see why he was
better than his Lord.
Ralph, as master of ceremonies, kept his head and forgot nothing. When it was
time to start, he tapped Claude on the shoulder, cutting his father short in one
of his best stories. Contrary to custom, the bridal couple were to go to the
station unaccompanied, and they vanished from the head of the table with only a
nod and a smile to the guests. Ralph hurried them into the light car, where he
had already stowed Enid's hand luggage. Only wizened little Mrs. Royce slipped
out from the kitchen to bid them good-bye.
That evening some bad boys had come out from town and strewn the road near
the mill with dozens of broken glass bottles, after which they hid in the wild
plum bushes to wait for the fun. Ralph's was the first car out, and though his
lights glittered on this bed of jagged glass, there was no time to stop; the
road was ditched on either side, so he had to drive straight ahead, and got into
Frankfort on flat tires. The express whistled just as he pulled up at the
station. He and Claude caught up the four pieces of hand luggage and put them in
the stateroom. Leaving Enid there with the bags, the two boys went to the rear
platform of the observation car to talk until the last moment. Ralph checked off
on his fingers the list of things he had promised Claude to attend to. Claude
thanked him feelingly. He felt that without Ralph he could never have got
married at all. They had never been such good friends as during the last
fortnight.
The wheels began to turn. Ralph gripped Claude's hand, ran to the front of
the car and stepped off. As Claude passed him, he stood waving his
handkerchief,—a rather funny figure under the station lights, in his black
clothes and his stiff straw hat, his short legs well apart, wearing his
incurably jaunty air.
The train glided quietly out through the summer darkness, along the timbered
river valley. Claude was alone on the back platform, smoking a nervous cigar. As
they passed the deep cut where Lovely Creek flowed into the river, he saw the
lights of the mill house flash for a moment in the distance. The night air was
still; heavy with the smell of sweet clover that grew high along the tracks, and
of wild grapevines wet with dew. The conductor came to ask for the tickets,
saying with a wise smile that he had been hunting for him, as he didn't like to
trouble the lady.
After he was gone, Claude looked at his watch, threw away the end of his
cigar, and went back through the Pullman cars. The passengers had gone to bed;
the overhead lights were always turned low when the train left Frankfort. He
made his way through the aisles of swaying green curtains, and tapped at the
door of his state room. It opened a little way, and Enid stood there in a white
silk dressing-gown with many ruffles, her hair in two smooth braids over her
shoulders.
"Claude," she said in a low voice, "would you mind getting a berth somewhere
out in the car tonight? The porter says they are not all taken. I'm not feeling
very well. I think the dressing on the chicken salad must have been too rich."
He answered mechanically. "Yes, certainly. Can't I get you something?"
"No, thank you. Sleep will do me more good than anything else. Good-night."
She closed the door, and he heard the lock slip. He stood looking at the
highly polished wood of the panel for a moment, then turned irresolutely and
went back along the slightly swaying aisle of green curtains. In the observation
car he stretched himself out upon two wicker chairs and lit another cigar. At
twelve o'clock the porter came in.
"This car is closed for the night, sah. Is you the gen'leman from the
stateroom in fourteen? Do you want a lower?"
"No, thank you. Is there a smoking car?"
"They is the day-coach smokah, but it ain't likely very clean at this time o'
night."
"That's all right. It's forward?" Claude absently handed him a coin, and the
porter conducted him to a very dirty car where the floor was littered with
newspapers and cigar stumps, and the leather cushions were grey with dust. A few
desperate looking men lay about with their shoes off and their suspenders
hanging down their backs. The sight of them reminded Claude that his left foot
was very sore, and that his shoes must have been hurting him for some time. He
pulled them off, and thrust his feet, in their silk socks, on the opposite seat.
On that long, dirty, uncomfortable ride Claude felt many things, but the
paramount feeling was homesickness. His hurt was of a kind that made him turn
with a sort of aching cowardice to the old, familiar things that were as sure as
the sunrise. If only the sagebrush plain, over which the stars were shining,
could suddenly break up and resolve itself into the windings of Lovely Creek,
with his father's house on the hill, dark and silent in the summer night! When
he closed his eyes he could see the light in his mother's window; and, lower
down, the glow of Mahailey's lamp, where she sat nodding and mending his old
shirts. Human love was a wonderful thing, he told himself, and it was most
wonderful where it had least to gain.
By morning the storm of anger, disappointment, and humiliation that was
boiling in him when he first sat down in the observation car, had died out. One
thing lingered; the peculiarly casual, indifferent, uninterested tone of his
wife's voice when she sent him away. It was the flat tone in which people make
commonplace remarks about common things.
Day broke with silvery brightness on the summer sage. The sky grew pink, the
sand grew gold. The dawn-wind brought through the windows the acrid smell of the
sagebrush: an odour that is peculiarly stimulating in the early morning, when it
always seems to promise freedom . . . large spaces. new beginnings, better days.
The train was due in Denver at eight o'clock. Exactly at seven thirty Claude
knocked at Enid's door,—this time firmly. She was dressed, and greeted him with
a fresh, smiling face, holding her hat in her hand.
"Are you feeling better?" he asked.
"Oh, yes! I am perfectly all right this morning. I've put out all your things
for you, there on the seat."
He glanced at them. "Thank you. But I won't have time to change, I'm afraid."
"Oh, won't you? I'm so sorry I forgot to give you your bag last night. But
you must put on another necktie, at least. You look too much like a groom."
"Do I?" he asked, with a scarcely perceptible curl of his lip.
Everything he needed was neatly arranged on the plush seat; shirt, collar,
tie, brushes, even a handkerchief. Those in his pockets were black from dusting
off the cinders that blew in all night, and he threw them down and took up the
clean one. There was a damp spot on it, and as he unfolded it he recognized the
scent of a cologne Enid often used. For some reason this attention unmanned him.
He felt the smart of tears in his eyes, and to hide them bent over the metal
basin and began to scrub his face. Enid stood behind him, adjusting her hat in
the mirror.
"How terribly smoky you are, Claude. I hope you don't smoke before
breakfast?"
"No. I was in the smoking car awhile. I suppose my clothes got full of it."
"You are covered with dust and cinders, too!" She took the clothes broom from
the rack and began to brush him.
Claude caught her hand. "Don't, please!" he said sharply. "The porter can do
that for me."
Enid watched him furtively as he closed and strapped his suitcase. She had
often heard that men were cross before breakfast.
"Sure you've forgotten nothing?" he asked before he closed her bag.
"Yes. I never lose things on the train,—do you?"
"Sometimes," he replied guardedly, not looking up as he snapped the catch.