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_ The weather, after the big storm, behaved capriciously. There was
a partial thaw which threatened to flood everything,--then a hard
freeze. The whole country glittered with an icy crust, and people
went about on a platform of frozen snow, quite above the level of
ordinary life. Claude got out Mr. Wheeler's old double sleigh
from the mass of heterogeneous objects that had for years lain on
top of it, and brought the rusty sleighbells up to the house for
Mahailey to scour with brick dust. Now that they had automobiles,
most of the farmers had let their old sleighs go to pieces. But
the Wheelers always kept everything.
Claude told his mother he meant to take Enid Royce for a
sleigh-ride. Enid was the daughter of Jason Royce, the grain
merchant, one of the early settlers, who for many years had run
the only grist mill in Frankfort county. She and Claude were old
playmates; he made a formal call at the millhouse, as it was
called, every summer during his vacation, and often dropped in to
see Mr. Royce at his town office.
Immediately after supper, Claude put the two wiry little blacks,
Pompey and Satan, to the sleigh. The moon had been up since long
before the sun went down, had been hanging pale in the sky most
of the afternoon, and now it flooded the snow-terraced land with
silver. It was one of those sparkling winter nights when a boy
feels that though the world is very big, he himself is bigger;
that under the whole crystalline blue sky there is no one quite
so warm and sentient as himself, and that all this magnificence
is for him. The sleighbells rang out with a kind of musical
lightheartedness, as if they were glad to sing again, after the
many winters they had hung rusty and dustchoked in the barn.
The mill road, that led off the highway and down to the river,
had pleasant associations for Claude. When he was a youngster,
every time his father went to mill, he begged to go along. He
liked the mill and the miller and the miller's little girl. He
had never liked the miller's house, however, and he was afraid of
Enid's mother. Even now, as he tied his horses to the long
hitch-bar down by the engine room, he resolved that he would not
be persuaded to enter that formal parlour, full of new-looking,
expensive furniture, where his energy always deserted him and he
could never think of anything to talk about. If he moved, his
shoes squeaked in the silence, and Mrs. Royce sat and blinked her
sharp little eyes at him, and the longer he stayed, the harder it
was to go.
Enid herself came to the door.
"Why, it's Claude!" she exclaimed. "Won't you come in?"
"No, I want you to go riding. I've got the old sleigh out. Come
on, it's a fine night!"
"I thought I heard bells. Won't you come in and see Mother while
I get my things on?"
Claude said he must stay with his horses, and ran back to the
hitch-bar. Enid didn't keep him waiting long; she wasn't that
kind. She came swiftly down the path and through the front gate
in the Maine seal motor-coat she wore when she drove her coupe in
cold weather.
"Now, which way?" Claude asked as the horses sprang forward and
the bells began to jingle.
"Almost any way. What a beautiful night! And I love your bells,
Claude. I haven't heard sleighbells since you used to bring me
and Gladys home from school in stormy weather. Why don't we stop
for her tonight? She has furs now, you know!" Here Enid laughed.
"All the old ladies are so terribly puzzled about them; they
can't find out whether your brother really gave them to her for
Christmas or not. If they were sure she bought them for herself,
I believe they'd hold a public meeting."
Claude cracked his whip over his eager little blacks. "Doesn't it
make you tired, the way they are always nagging at Gladys?"
"It would, if she minded. But she's just as serene! They must
have something to fuss about, and of course poor Mrs. Farmer's
back taxes are piling up. I certainly suspect Bayliss of the
furs."
Claude did not feel as eager to stop for Gladys as he had been a
few moments before. They were approaching the town now, and
lighted windows shone softly across the blue whiteness of the
snow. Even in progressive Frankfort, the street lights were
turned off on a night so glorious as this. Mrs. Farmer and her
daughter had a little white cottage down in the south part of the
town, where only people of modest means lived. "We must stop to
see Gladys' mother, if only for a minute," Enid said as they drew
up before the fence. "She is so fond of company." Claude tied his
team to a tree, and they went up to the narrow, sloping porch,
hung with vines that were full of frozen snow.
Mrs. Farmer met them; a large, rosy woman of fifty, with a
pleasant Kentucky voice. She took Enid's arm affectionately, and
Claude followed them into the long, low sitting-room, which had
an uneven floor and a lamp at either end, and was scantily
furnished in rickety mahogany. There, close beside the hard-coal
burner, sat Bayliss Wheeler. He did not rise when they entered,
but said, "Hello, folks," in a rather sheepish voice. On a little
table, beside Mrs. Farmer's workbasket, was the box of candy he
had lately taken out of his overcoat pocket, still tied up with
its gold cord. A tall lamp stood beside the piano, where Gladys
had evidently been practising. Claude wondered whether Bayliss
actually pretended to an interest in music! At this moment Gladys
was in the kitchen, Mrs. Farmer explained, looking for her
mother's glasses, mislaid when she was copying a recipe for a
cheese souffle.
"Are you still getting new recipes, Mrs. Farmer?" Enid asked her.
"I thought you could make every dish in the world already."
"Oh, not quite!" Mrs. Farmer laughed modestly and showed that she
liked compliments. "Do sit down, Claude," she besought of the
stiff image by the door. "Daughter will be here directly."
At that moment Gladys Farmer appeared.
"Why, I didn't know you had company, Mother," she said, coming in
to greet them.
This meant, Claude supposed, that Bayliss was not company. He
scarcely glanced at Gladys as he took the hand she held out to
him.
One of Gladys' grandfathers had come from Antwerp, and she had
the settled composure, the full red lips, brown eyes, and dimpled
white hands which occur so often in Flemish portraits of young
women. Some people thought her a trifle heavy, too mature and
positive to be called pretty, even though they admired her rich,
tulip-like complexion. Gladys never seemed aware that her looks
and her poverty and her extravagance were the subject of
perpetual argument, but went to and from school every day with
the air of one whose position is assured. Her musicianship gave
her a kind of authority in Frankfort.
Enid explained the purpose of their call. "Claude has got out his
old sleigh, and we've come to take you for a ride. Perhaps
Bayliss will go, too?"
Bayliss said he guessed he would, though Claude knew there was
nothing he hated so much as being out in the cold. Gladys ran
upstairs to put on a warm dress, and Enid accompanied her,
leaving Mrs. Farmer to make agreeable conversation between her
two incompatible guests.
"Bayliss was just telling us how you lost your hogs in the storm,
Claude. What a pity!" she said sympathetically.
Yes, Claude thought, Bayliss wouldn't be at all reticent about
that incident!
"I suppose there was really no way to save them," Mrs. Farmer
went on in her polite way; her voice was low and round, like her
daughter's, different from the high, tight Western voice. "So I
hope you don't let yourself worry about it."
"No, I don't worry about anything as dead as those hogs were.
What's the use?" Claude asked boldly.
"That's right," murmured Mrs. Farmer, rocking a little in her
chair. "Such things will happen sometimes, and we ought not to
take them too hard. It isn't as if a person had been hurt, is
it?"
Claude shook himself and tried to respond to her cordiality, and
to the shabby comfort of her long parlour, so evidently doing its
best to be attractive to her friends. There weren't four steady
legs on any of the stuffed chairs or little folding tables she
had brought up from the South, and the heavy gold moulding was
half broken away from the oil portrait of her father, the judge.
But she carried her poverty lightly, as Southern people did after
the Civil War, and she didn't fret half so much about her back
taxes as her neighbours did. Claude tried to talk agreeably to
her, but he was distracted by the sound of stifled laughter
upstairs. Probably Gladys and Enid were joking about Bayliss'
being there. How shameless girls were, anyhow!
People came to their front windows to look out as the sleigh
dashed jingling up and down the village streets. When they left
town, Bayliss suggested that they drive out past the Trevor
place. The girls began to talk about the two young New
Englanders, Trevor and Brewster, who had lived there when
Frankfort was still a tough little frontier settlement. Every one
was talking about them now, for a few days ago word had come that
one of the partners, Amos Brewster, had dropped dead in his law
office in Hartford. It was thirty years since he and his friend,
Bruce Trevor, had tried to be great cattle men in Frankfort
county, and had built the house on the round hill east of the
town, where they wasted a great deal of money very joyously.
Claude's father always declared that the amount they squandered
in carousing was negligible compared to their losses in
commendable industrial endeavour. The country, Mr. Wheeler said,
had never been the same since those boys left it. He delighted to
tell about the time when Trevor and Brewster went into sheep.
They imported a breeding ram from Scotland at a great expense,
and when he arrived were so impatient to get the good of him that
they turned him in with the ewes as soon as he was out of his
crate. Consequently all the lambs were born at the wrong season;
came at the beginning of March, in a blinding blizzard, and the
mothers died from exposure. The gallant Trevor took horse and
spurred all over the county, from one little settlement to
another, buying up nursing bottles and nipples to feed the orphan
lambs.
The rich bottom land about the Trevor place had been rented out
to a truck gardener for years now; the comfortable house with its
billiard-room annex-- a wonder for that part of the country in
its day--remained closed, its windows boarded up. It sat on the
top of a round knoll, a fine cottonwood grove behind it. Tonight,
as Claude drove toward it, the hill with its tall straight trees
looked like a big fur cap put down on the snow.
"Why hasn't some one bought that house long ago and fixed it up?"
Enid remarked. "There is no building site around here to compare
with it. It looks like the place where the leading citizen of the
town ought to live."
"I'm glad you like it, Enid," said Bayliss in a guarded voice.
"I've always had a sneaking fancy for the place myself. Those
fellows back there never wanted to sell it. But now the estate's
got to be settled up. I bought it yesterday. The deed is on its
way to Hartford for signature."
Enid turned round in her seat. "Why Bayliss, are you in earnest?
Think of just buying the Trevor place off-hand, as if it were any
ordinary piece of real estate! Will you make over the house, and
live there some day?"
"I don't know about living there. It's too far to walk to my
business, and the road across this bottom gets pretty muddy for a
car in the spring."
"But it's not far, less than a mile. If I once owned that spot,
I'd surely never let anybody else live there. Even Carrie
remembers it. She often asks in her letters whether any one has
bought the Trevor place yet."
Carrie Royce, Enid's older sister, was a missionary in China.
"Well," Bayliss admitted, "I didn't buy it for an investment,
exactly. I paid all it was worth."
Enid turned to Gladys, who was apparently not listening. "You'd
be the one who could plan a mansion for Trevor Hill, Gladys. You
always have such original ideas about houses."
"Yes, people who have no houses of their own often seem to have
ideas about building," said Gladys quietly. "But I like the
Trevor place as it is. I hate to think that one of them is dead.
People say they did have such good times up there."
Bayliss grunted. "Call it good times if you like. The kids were
still grubbing whiskey bottles out of the cellar when I first
came to town. Of course, if I decide to live there, I'll pull
down that old trap and put up something modern." He often took
this gruff tone with Gladys in public.
Enid tried to draw the driver into the conversation. "There seems
to be a difference of opinion here, Claude."
"Oh," said Gladys carelessly, "it's Bayliss' property, or soon
will be. He will build what he likes. I've always known somebody
would get that place away from me, so I'm prepared."
"Get it away from you?" muttered Bayliss, amazed.
"Yes. As long as no one bought it and spoiled it, it was mine as
much as it was anybody's."
"Claude," said Enid banteringly, "now both your brothers have
houses. Where are you going to have yours?"
"I don't know that I'll ever have one. I think I'll run about the
world a little before I draw my plans," he replied sarcastically.
"Take me with you, Claude!" said Gladys in a tone of sudden
weariness. From that spiritless murmur Enid suspected that
Bayliss had captured Gladys' hand under the buffalo robe.
Grimness had settled down over the sleighing party. Even Enid,
who was not highly sensitive to unuttered feelings, saw that
there was an uncomfortable constraint. A sharp wind had come up.
Bayliss twice suggested turning back, but his brother answered,
"Pretty soon," and drove on. He meant that Bayliss should have
enough of it. Not until Enid whispered reproachfully, "I really
think you ought to turn; we're all getting cold," did he realize
that he had made his sleighing party into a punishment! There was
certainly nothing to punish Enid for; she had done her best, and
had tried to make his own bad manners less conspicuous. He
muttered a blundering apology to her when he lifted her from the
sleigh at the mill house. On his long drive home he had bitter
thoughts for company.
He was so angry with Gladys that he hadn't been able to bid her
good-night. Everything she said on the ride had nettled him. If
she meant to marry Bayliss, then she ought to throw off this
affectation of freedom and independence. If she did not mean to,
why did she accept favours from him and let him get into the
habit of walking into her house and putting his box of candy on
the table, as all Frankfort fellows did when they were courting?
Certainly she couldn't make herself believe that she liked his
society!
When they were classmates at the Frankfort High School, Gladys
was Claude's aesthetic proxy. It wasn't the proper thing for a
boy to be too clean, or too careful about his dress and manners.
But if he selected a girl who was irreproachable in these
respects, got his Latin and did his laboratory work with her,
then all her personal attractions redounded to his credit. Gladys
had seemed to appreciate the honour Claude did her, and it was
not all on her own account that she wore such beautifully ironed
muslin dresses when they went on botanical expeditions.
Driving home after that miserable sleigh-ride, Claude told
himself that in so far as Gladys was concerned he could make up
his mind to the fact that he had been "stung" all along. He had
believed in her fine feelings; believed implicitly. Now he knew
she had none so fine that she couldn't pocket them when there was
enough to be gained by it. Even while he said these things over
and over, his old conception of Gladys, down at the bottom of his
mind, remained persistently unchanged. But that only made his
state of feeling the more painful. He was deeply hurt,--and for
some reason, youth, when it is hurt, likes to feel itself
betrayed. _
Read next: Book Two: Enid: Chapter 1
Read previous: Book One: On Lovely Creek: Chapter 18
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