XIV
Ralph and his father moved to the new ranch the last of August,
and Mr. Wheeler wrote back that late in the fall he meant to ship
a carload of grass steers to the home farm to be fattened during
the winter. This, Claude saw, would mean a need for fodder. There
was a fifty-acre corn field west of the creek,--just on the
sky-line when one looked out from the west windows of the house.
Claude decided to put this field into winter wheat, and early in
September he began to cut and bind the corn that stood upon it
for fodder. As soon as the corn was gathered, he would plough up
the ground, and drill in the wheat when he planted the other
wheat fields.
This was Claude's first innovation, and it did not meet with
approval. When Bayliss came out to spend Sunday with his mother,
he asked her what Claude thought he was doing, anyhow. If he
wanted to change the crop on that field, why didn't he plant oats
in the spring, and then get into wheat next fall? Cutting fodder
and preparing the ground now, would only hold him back in his
work. When Mr. Wheeler came home for a short visit, he jocosely
referred to that quarter as "Claude's wheat field."
Claude went ahead with what he had undertaken to do, but all
through September he was nervous and apprehensive about the
weather. Heavy rains, if they came, would make him late with his
wheat-planting, and then there would certainly be criticism. In
reality, nobody cared much whether the planting was late or not,
but Claude thought they did, and sometimes in the morning he
awoke in a state of panic because he wasn't getting ahead faster.
He had Dan and one of August Yoeder's four sons to help him, and
he worked early and late. The new field he ploughed and drilled
himself. He put a great deal of young energy into it, and buried
a great deal of discontent in its dark furrows. Day after day he
flung himself upon the land and planted it with what was
fermenting in him, glad to be so tired at night that he could not
think.
Ralph came home for Leonard Dawson's wedding, on the first of
October. All the Wheelers went to the wedding, even Mahailey, and
there was a great gathering of the country folk and townsmen.
After Ralph left, Claude had the place to himself again, and the
work went on as usual. The stock did well, and there were no
vexatious interruptions. The fine weather held, and every morning
when Claude got up, another gold day stretched before him like a
glittering carpet, leading. . . ? When the question where the
days were leading struck him on the edge of his bed, he hurried
to dress and get down-stairs in time to fetch wood and coal for
Mahailey. They often reached the kitchen at the same moment, and
she would shake her finger at him and say, "You come down to help
me, you nice boy, you!" At least he was of some use to Mahailey.
His father could hire one of the Yoeder boys to look after the
place, but Mahailey wouldn't let any one else save her old back.
Mrs. Wheeler, as well as Mahailey, enjoyed that fall. She slept
late in the morning, and read and rested in the afternoon. She
made herself some new house-dresses out of a grey material Claude
chose. "It's almost like being a bride, keeping house for just
you, Claude," she sometimes said.
Soon Claude had the satisfaction of seeing a blush of green come
up over his brown wheat fields, visible first in the dimples and
little hollows, then flickering over the knobs and levels like a
fugitive smile. He watched the green blades coming every day,
when he and Dan went afield with their wagons to gather corn.
Claude sent Dan to shuck on the north quarter, and he worked on
the south. He always brought in one more load a day than Dan
did,--that was to be expected. Dan explained this very
reasonably, Claude thought, one afternoon when they were hooking
up their teams.
"It's all right for you to jump at that corn like you was
a-beating carpets, Claude; it's your corn, or anyways it's your
Paw's. Them fields will always lay betwixt you and trouble. But a
hired man's got no property but his back, and he has to save it.
I figure that I've only got about so many jumps left in me, and I
ain't a-going to jump too hard at no man's corn."
"What's the matter? I haven't been hinting that you ought to jump
any harder, have I ?"
"No, you ain't, but I just want you to know that there's reason
in all things." With this Dan got into his wagon and drove off.
He had probably been meditating upon this declaration for some
time.
That afternoon Claude suddenly stopped flinging white ears into
the wagon beside him. It was about five o'clock, the yellowest
hour of the autumn day. He stood lost in a forest of light, dry,
rustling corn leaves, quite hidden away from the world. Taking
off his husking-gloves, he wiped the sweat from his face, climbed
up to the wagon box, and lay down on the ivory-coloured corn. The
horses cautiously advanced a step or two, and munched with great
content at ears they tore from the stalks with their teeth.
Claude lay still, his arms under his head, looking up at the
hard, polished blue sky, watching the flocks of crows go over
from the fields where they fed on shattered grain, to their nests
in the trees along Lovely Creek. He was thinking about what Dan
had said while they were hitching up. There was a great deal of
truth in it, certainly. Yet, as for him, he often felt that he
would rather go out into the world and earn his bread among
strangers than sweat under this half-responsibility for acres and
crops that were not his own. He knew that his father was
sometimes called a "land hog" by the country people, and he
himself had begun to feel that it was not right they should have
so much land,--to farm, or to rent, or to leave idle, as they
chose. It was strange that in all the centuries the world had
been going, the question of property had not been better
adjusted. The people who had it were slaves to it, and the people
who didn't have it were slaves to them.
He sprang down into the gold light to finish his load. Warm
silence nestled over the cornfield. Sometimes a light breeze rose
for a moment and rattled the stiff, dry leaves, and he himself
made a great rustling and crackling as he tore the husks from the
ears.
Greedy crows were still cawing about before they flapped
homeward. When he drove out to the highway, the sun was going
down, and from his seat on the load he could see far and near.
Yonder was Dan's wagon, coming in from the north quarter; over
there was the roof of Leonard Dawson's new house, and his
windmill, standing up black in the declining day. Before him were
the bluffs of the pasture, and the little trees, almost bare,
huddled in violet shadow along the creek, and the Wheeler
farm-house on the hill, its windows all aflame with the last red
fire of the sun.
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.
