________________________________________________
_ 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. _
Read next: Book Two: Enid: Chapter 7
Read previous: Book Two: Enid: Chapter 5
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