________________________________________________
_ 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. _
Read next: Book One: On Lovely Creek: Chapter 16
Read previous: Book One: On Lovely Creek: Chapter 14
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