One of Ours
Book I: On Lovely Creek
Chapter XV
Claude dreaded the inactivity of the winter, to which the farmer usually
looks forward with pleasure. He made the Thanksgiving football game a pretext
for going up to Lincoln,—went intending to stay three days and stayed ten. The
first night, when he knocked at the glass door of the Erlichs' sitting-room and
took them by surprise, he thought he could never go back to the farm.
Approaching the house on that clear, frosty autumn evening, crossing the lawn
strewn with crackling dry leaves, he told himself that he must not hope to find
things the same. But they were the same. The boys were lounging and smoking
about the square table with the lamp on it, and Mrs. Erlich was at the piano,
playing one of Mendelssohn's "Songs Without Words." When he knocked, Otto opened
the door and called:
"A surprise for you, Mother! Guess who's here."
What a welcome she gave him, and how much she had to tell him! While they
were all talking at once, Henry, the oldest son, came downstairs dressed for a
Colonial ball, with satin breeches and stockings and a sword. His brothers began
to point out the inaccuracies of his costume, telling him that he couldn't
possibly call himself a French emigre unless he wore a powdered wig. Henry took
a book of memoirs from the shelf to prove to them that at the time when the
French emigres were coming to Philadelphia, powder was going out of fashion.
During this discussion, Mrs. Erlich drew Claude aside and told him in excited
whispers that her cousin Wilhelmina, the singer, had at last been relieved of
the invalid husband whom she had supported for so many years, and now was going
to marry her accompanist, a man much younger than herself.
After the French emigre had gone off to his party, two young instructors from
the University dropped in, and Mrs. Erlich introduced Claude as her "landed
proprietor" who managed a big ranch out in one of the western counties. The
instructors took their leave early, but Claude stayed on. What was it that made
life seem so much more interesting and attractive here than elsewhere? There was
nothing wonderful about this room; a lot of books, a lamp . . . comfortable,
hard-used furniture, some people whose lives were in no way remarkable—and yet
he had the sense of being in a warm and gracious atmosphere, charged with
generous enthusiasms and ennobled by romantic friendships. He was glad to see
the same pictures on the wall; to find the Swiss wood-cutter on the mantel,
still bending under his load of faggots; to handle again the heavy brass
paper-knife that in its time had cut so many interesting pages. He picked it up
from the cover of a red book lying there,-one of Trevelyan's volumes on
Garibaldi, which Julius told him he must read before he was another week older.
The next afternoon Claude took Mrs. Erlich to the football game and came home
with the family for dinner. He lingered on day after day, but after the first
few evenings his heart was growing a little heavier all the time. The Erlich
boys had so many new interests he couldn't keep up with them; they had been
going on, and he had been standing still. He wasn't conceited enough to mind
that. The thing that hurt was the feeling of being out of it, of being lost in
another kind of life in which ideas played but little part. He was a stranger
who walked in and sat down here; but he belonged out in the big, lonely country,
where people worked hard with their backs and got tired like the horses, and
were too sleepy at night to think of anything to say. If Mrs. Erlich and her
Hungarian woman made lentil soup and potato dumplings and WienerSchnitzel for
him, it only made the plain fare on the farm seem the heavier.
When the second Friday came round, he went to bid his friends good-bye and
explained that he must be going home tomorrow. On leaving the house that night,
he looked back at the ruddy windows and told himself that it was goodbye indeed,
and not, as Mrs. Erlich had fondly said, auf wiedersehen. Coming here only made
him more discontented with his lot; his frail claim on this kind of life existed
no longer. He must settle down into something that was his own, take hold of it
with both hands, no matter how grim it was. The next day, during his journey out
through the bleak winter country, he felt that he was going deeper and deeper
into reality.
Claude had not written when he would be home, but on Saturday there were
always some of the neighbours in town. He rode out with one of the Yoeder boys,
and from their place walked on the rest of the way. He told his mother he was
glad to be back again. He sometimes felt as if it were disloyal to her for him
to be so happy with Mrs. Erlich. His mother had been shut away from the world on
a farm for so many years; and even before that, Vermont was no very stimulating
place to grow up in, he guessed. She had not had a chance, any more than he had,
at those things which make the mind more supple and keep the feeling young.
The next morning it was snowing outside, and they had a long, pleasant Sunday
breakfast. Mrs. Wheeler said they wouldn't try to go to church, as Claude must
be tired. He worked about the place until noon, making the stock comfortable and
looking after things that Dan had neglected in his absence. After dinner he sat
down at the secretary and wrote a long letter to his friends in Lincoln.
Whenever he lifted his eyes for a moment, he saw the pasture bluffs and the
softly falling snow. There was something beautiful about the submissive way in
which the country met winter. It made one contented,—sad, too. He sealed his
letter and lay down on the couch to read the paper, but was soon asleep.
When he awoke the afternoon was already far gone. The clock on the shelf
ticked loudly in the still room, the coal stove sent out a warm glow. The
blooming plants in the south bow-window looked brighter and fresher than usual
in the soft white light that came up from the snow. Mrs. Wheeler was reading by
the west window, looking away from her book now and then to gaze off at the grey
sky and the muffled fields. The creek made a winding violet chasm down through
the pasture, and the trees followed it in a black thicket, curiously tufted with
snow. Claude lay for some time without speaking, watching his mother's profile
against the glass, and thinking how good this soft, clinging snow-fall would be
for his wheat fields.
"What are you reading, Mother?" he asked presently.
She turned her head toward him. "Nothing very new. I was just Beginning
'Paradise Lost' again. I haven't read it for a long while."
"Read aloud, won't you? Just wherever you happen to be. I like the sound of
it."
Mrs. Wheeler always read deliberately, giving each syllable its full value.
Her voice, naturally soft and rather wistful, trailed over the long measures and
the threatening Biblical names, all familiar to her and full of meaning.
"A dungeon horrible, on all sides round As one great furnace flamed; yet from
the flames No light, but rather darkness visible Served only to discover sights
of woe."
Her voice groped as if she were trying to realize something. The room was
growing greyer as she read on through the turgid catalogue of the heathen gods,
so packed with stories and pictures, so unaccountably glorious. At last the
light failed, and Mrs. Wheeler closed the book.
"That's fine," Claude commented from the couch. "But Milton couldn't have got
along without the wicked, could he?"
Mrs. Wheeler looked up. "Is that a joke?" she asked slyly.
"Oh no, not at all! It just struck me that this part is so much more
interesting than the books about perfect innocence in Eden."
"And yet I suppose it shouldn't be so," Mrs. Wheeler said slowly, as if in
doubt.
Her son laughed and sat up, smoothing his rumpled hair. "The fact remains
that it is, dear Mother. And if you took all the great sinners out of the Bible,
you'd take out all the interesting characters, wouldn't you?"
"Except Christ," she murmured.
"Yes, except Christ. But I suppose the Jews were honest when they thought him
the most dangerous kind of criminal."
"Are you trying to tangle me up?" his mother inquired, with both reproach and
amusement in her voice.
Claude went to the window where she was sitting, and looked out at the snowy
fields, now becoming blue and desolate as the shadows deepened. "I only mean
that even in the Bible the people who were merely free from blame didn't amount
to much."
"Ah, I see!" Mrs. Wheeler chuckled softly. "You are trying to get me back to
Faith and Works. There's where you always balked when you were a little fellow.
Well, Claude, I don't know as much about it as I did then. As I get older, I
leave a good deal more to God. I believe He wants to save whatever is noble in
this world, and that He knows more ways of doing it than I." She rose like a
gentle shadow and rubbed her cheek against his flannel shirt-sleeve, murmuring,
"I believe He is sometimes where we would least expect to find Him,—even in
proud, rebellious hearts."
For a moment they clung together in the pale, clear square of the west
window, as the two natures in one person sometimes meet and cling in a fated
hour.