One of Ours
Book II: Enid
Chapter VI
After his interview with Mr. Royce, Claude drove directly to the mill house.
As he came up the shady road, he saw with disappointment the flash of two white
dresses instead of one, moving about in the sunny flower garden. The visitor was
Gladys Farmer. This was her vacation time. She had walked out to the mill in the
cool of the morning to spend the day with Enid. Now they were starting off to
gather water-cresses, and had stopped in the garden to smell the heliotrope. On
this scorching afternoon the purple sprays gave out a fragrance that hung over
the flower-bed and brushed their cheeks like a warm breath. The girls looked up
at the same moment and recognized Claude. They waved to him and hurried down to
the gate to congratulate him on his recovery. He took their little tin pails and
followed them around the old dam-head and up a sandy gorge, along a clear thread
of water that trickled into Lovely Creek just above the mill. They came to the
gravelly hill where the stream took its source from a spring hollowed out under
the exposed roots of two elm trees. All about the spring, and in the sandy bed
of the shallow creek, the cresses grew cool and green.
Gladys had strong feelings about places. She looked around her with
satisfaction. "Of all the places where we used to play, Enid, this was my
favourite," she declared.
"You girls sit up there on the elm roots," Claude suggested. "Wherever you
put your foot in this soft gravel, water gathers. You'll spoil your white shoes.
I'll get the cress for you."
"Stuff my pail as full as you can, then," Gladys called as they sat down. "I
wonder why the Spanish dagger grows so thick on this hill, Enid? These plants
were old and tough when we were little. I love it here."
She leaned back upon the hot, glistening hill-side. The sun came down in red
rays through the elm-tops, and all the pebbles and bits of quartz glittered
dazzlingly. Down in the stream bed the water, where it caught the light,
twinkled like tarnished gold. Claude's sandy head and stooping shoulders were
mottled with sunshine as they moved about over the green patches, and his duck
trousers looked much whiter than they were. Gladys was too poor to travel, but
she had the good fortune to be able to see a great deal within a few miles of
Frankfort, and a warm imagination helped her to find life interesting. She did,
as she confided to Enid, want to go to Colorado; she was ashamed of never having
seen a mountain.
Presently Claude came up the bank with two shining, dripping pails. "Now may
I sit down with you for a few minutes?"
Moving to make room for him beside her, Enid noticed that his thin face was
heavily beaded with perspiration. His pocket handkerchief was wet and sandy, so
she gave him her own, with a proprietary air. "Why, Claude, you look quite
tired! Have you been over-doing? Where were you before you came here?"
"I was out in the country with your father, looking at his alfalfa."
"And he walked you all over the field in the hot sun, I suppose?"
Claude laughed. "He did."
"Well, I'll scold him tonight. You stay here and rest. I am going to drive
Gladys home."
Gladys protested, but at last consented that they should both drive her home
in Claude's car. They lingered awhile, however, listening to the soft, amiable
bubbling of the spring; a wise, unobtrusive voice, murmuring night and day,
continually telling the truth to people who could not understand it.
When they went back to the house Enid stopped long enough to cut a bunch of
heliotrope for Mrs. Farmer,—though with the sinking of the sun its rich perfume
had already vanished. They left Gladys and her flowers and cresses at the gate
of the white cottage, now half hidden by gaudy trumpet vines.
Claude turned his car and went back along the dim, twilight road with Enid.
"I usually like to see Gladys, but when I found her with you this afternoon, I
was terribly disappointed for a minute. I'd just been talking with your father,
and I wanted to come straight to you. Do you think you could marry me, Enid?"
"I don't believe it would be for the best, Claude." She spoke sadly.
He took her passive hand. "Why not?"
"My mind is full of other plans. Marriage is for most girls, but not for
all."
Enid had taken off her hat. In the low evening light Claude studied her pale
face under her brown hair. There was something graceful and charming about the
way she held her head, something that suggested both submissiveness and great
firmness. "I've had those far-away dreams, too, Enid; but now my thoughts don't
get any further than you. If you could care ever so little for me to start on,
I'd be willing to risk the rest." She sighed. "You know I care for you. I've
never made any secret of it. But we're happy as we are, aren't we?"
"No, I'm not. I've got to have some life of my own, or I'll go to pieces. If
you won't have me, I'll try South America,—and I won't come back until I am an
old man and you are an old woman."
Enid looked at him, and they both smiled.
The mill house was black except for a light in one upstairs window. Claude
sprang out of his car and lifted Enid gently to the ground. She let him kiss her
soft cool mouth, and her long lashes. In the pale, dusty dusk, lit only by a few
white stars, and with the chill of the creek already in the air, she seemed to
Claude like a shivering little ghost come up from the rushes where the old
mill-dam used to be. A terrible melancholy clutched at the boy's heart. He
hadn't thought it would be like this. He drove home feeling weak and broken. Was
there nothing in the world outside to answer to his own feelings, and was every
turn to be fresh disappointment? Why was life so mysteriously hard? This country
itself was sad, he thought, looking about him,-and you could no more change that
than you could change the story in an unhappy human face. He wished to God he
were sick again; the world was too rough a place to get about in.
There was one person in the world who felt sorry for Claude that night.
Gladys Farmer sat at her bedroom window for a long while, watching the stars and
thinking about what she had seen plainly enough that afternoon. She had liked
Enid ever since they were little girls,—and knew all there was to know about
her. Claude would become one of those dead people that moved about the streets
of Frankfort; everything that was Claude would perish, and the shell of him
would come and go and eat and sleep for fifty years. Gladys had taught the
children of many such dead men. She had worked out a misty philosophy for
herself, full of strong convictions and confused figures. She believed that all
things which might make the world beautiful—love and kindness, leisure and
art—were shut up in prison, and that successful men like Bayliss Wheeler held
the keys. The generous ones, who would let these things out to make people
happy, were somehow weak, and could not break the bars. Even her own little life
was squeezed into an unnatural shape by the domination of people like Bayliss.
She had not dared, for instance, to go to Ornaha that spring for the three
performances of the Chicago Opera Company. Such an extravagance would have
aroused a corrective spirit in all her friends, and in the schoolboard as well;
they would probably have decided not to give her the little increase in salary
she counted upon having next year.
There were people, even in Frankfort, who had imagination and generous
impulses, but they were all, she had to admit, inefficient—failures. There was
Miss Livingstone, the fiery, emotional old maid who couldn't tell the truth; old
Mr. Smith, a lawyer without clients, who read Shakespeare and Dryden all day
long in his dusty office; Bobbie Jones, the effeminate drug clerk, who wrote
free verse and "movie" scenarios, and tended the sodawater fountain.
Claude was her one hope. Ever since they graduated from High School, all
through the four years she had been teaching, she had waited to see him emerge
and prove himself. She wanted him to be more successful than Bayliss AND STILL
BE CLAUDE. She would have made any sacrifice to help him on. If a strong boy
like Claude, so well endowed and so fearless, must fail, simply because he had
that finer strain in his nature,—then life was not worth the chagrin it held
for a passionate heart like hers.
At last Gladys threw herself upon the bed. If he married Enid, that would be
the end. He would go about strong and heavy, like Mr. Royce; a big machine with
the springs broken inside.