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"Bidding the eagles of the West fly on. . ."
CLAUDE WHEELER opened his eyes before the sun was up and vigorously shook his younger brother, who lay in the other half of the same bed.
"Ralph, Ralph, get awake! Come down and help me wash the car."
"What for?"
"Why, aren't we going to the circus today?"
"Car's all right. Let me alone." The boy turned over and pulled the sheet up to his face, to shut out the light which was beginning to come through the curtainless windows.
Claude rose and dressed,—a simple operation which took very little time. He crept down two flights of stairs, feeling his way in the dusk, his red hair standing up in the peaks, like a cock's comb. He went through the kitchen into the adjoining washroom, which held two porcelain stands with running water. Everybody had washed before going to bed,
Old Mahailey herself came in from the yard, with her apron full of corn-cobs to start a fire in the kitchen stove. She smiled at him in the foolish fond way she often had with him when they were alone.
"What air you gittin' up for a-ready, boy? You goin' to
"All right, Mahailey." Claude caught up his cap and ran out of doors, down the hillside toward the barn. The sun popped up over the edge of the prairie like a broad, smiling face; the light poured across the close-cropped August pastures and the hilly, timbered windings of Lovely Creek,—a clear little stream with a sand bottom, that curled and twisted playfully about through the south section of the big Wheeler ranch. It was a fine day to do anything; the sort of day that must, somehow, turn out well.
Claude backed the little Ford car out of its shed, ran it up to the horse-tank, and began to throw water on the mud-crusted wheels and windshield. While he was at work the two hired men, Dan and Jerry, came shambling down the hill to feed the stock. Jerry was grumbling and swearing about something, but Claude wrung out his wet rags and, beyond a nod, paid no attention to them. Somehow his father always managed to have the roughest and dirtiest hired men in the country
Molly was a faithful old mare, the mother of many colts; Claude and his younger brother had learned to ride on her. This man Jerry, taking her out to work one morning, let her step on a board with a nail sticking up in it. He pulled the nail out of her foot, said nothing to anybody, and drove her to the cultivator all day. Now she had been standing in her stall for weeks, patiently suffering, her body wretchedly thin, and her leg swollen until it looked like an elephant's. She would have to stand there, the veterinary said, until her hoof
Mahailey came out on the hilltop and rang the breakfast bell. After the hired men went up to the house, Claude slipped into the barn to see that Molly had got her share of oats. She was eating quietly, her head hanging, and her scaly, dead-looking foot lifted just a little from the ground. When he stroked her neck and talked to her she stopped grinding and gazed at him mournfully. She knew him, and wrinkled her nose and drew her upper lip back from her worn teeth, to show that she liked being petted. She let him touch her foot and examine her leg.
When Claude reached the kitchen, his mother was sitting at one end of the breakfast table, pouring weak coffee, his brother and Dan and Jerry were in their chairs, and Mahailey was baking griddle cakes at the stove. A moment later Mr. Wheeler came down the enclosed stairway and walked the length of the table to his own place. He was a very large man, taller and broader than any of his neighbours. He seldom wore a coa in summer, and his rumpled shirt bulged out carelessly over the belt of his trousers. His florid face was clean shaven, likely to be a trifle tobacco-stained about the mouth, and it was conspicuous both for good-nature and coarse humour, and for an imperturbable physical composure.
As soon as he was seated, Mr. Wheeler reached for the two-pint sugar bowl and began to pour sugar into his coffee.
"I shouldn't wonder if I happened in town sometime before the elephants get away." He spoke very deliberately, with a State-of-Maine drawl, and his voice was smooth and
Claude put down his kife. "Can't we have the car? I've washed it on purpose."
"And what about Dan and Jerry? They want to see the circus just as much as you do, and I want the hides should go in; they're bringing a good price now. I don't mind about your washing the car; mud preserves the paint, they say, but it'll be all right this time, Claude."
The hired men haw-hawed and Ralph giggled. Claude's freckled face got very red. The pancake grew stiff and heavy in his mouth and was hard to swallow. His father knew he hated to drive the mules to town, and knew how he hated to go anywhere with Dan and Jerry. As for the hides, they were the skins of four steers that had perished in the blizzard last winter through the wanton carelessness of these same hired men, and the price they would bring would not half pay for the time his father had spent in stripping and curing them. They had lain in a shed loft all summer, and the wagon had been to town a dozen times. But today, when he wanted to go to Frankfort clean and care-free, he must take these stinking hides and tow coarse-mouthed men, and drive a pair of mules that always brayed and balked and behaved ridiculously in a crowd. Probably his father had looked out of the window and seen him washing the car, and had put this up on him
Mrs. Wheeler looked at Claude sympathetically, feeling that he was disappointed. Perhaps she, too, suspected a joke. She had learned that humour might wear almost any guise.
When Claude started for the barn after breakfast, she came running down the path, calling to him faintly,—hurrying always made her short of breath. Overtaking him, she looked up with solicitude, shading her eyes with her delicately formed hand. "If you want I should do up your linen coat, Claude, I can iron it while you're hitching," she said wistfully.
Claude stood kicking at a bunch of mottled feathers that had once been a young chicken. His shoulders were drawn high, his mother saw, and his figure suggested energy and determined self-control.
"You needn't mind, mother." He spoke rapidly, muttering his words. "I'd better wear my old clothes if I have to take the hides. They're greasy and in the sun they'll smell worse than fertilizer."
"The men can handle the hides, I should think. Wouldn't you feel better in town to be dressed?" She was still blinking up at him.
"Don't bother about it. Put me out a clean coloured shirt, if you want to. That's all right."
He turned toward the barn, and his mother went slowly back the path up to the house. She was so plucky and so stooped, his dear mother! He guessed if she could stand having these men about, could cook and wash for them, he could drive them to town!
Half an hour after the wagon left, Nat Wheeler put on an alpaca coat and went off in the rattling buckboard in which, though he kept two automobiles, he still drove about the
There were few days in the year when Wheeler did not drive off somewhere; to an auction sale, or a political
People recognized Nat Wheeler and his cart a mile away. He sat massive and comfortable, weighing down one end of the slanting seat, his driving hand lying on his knee. Even his German neighbours, the Yoeders, who hated to stop work for a quarter of an hour on any account, were glad to see him coming. The merchants in the little towns about the county missed him if he didn't drop in once a week or so. He was
The French saying, "Joy of the street, sorrow of the home," was examplified in Mr. Wheeler, though not at all in the French way. His own affairs were of secondary importance to him. In the early days he had homesteaded and bought and leased enough land to make him rich. Now he had only to rent it out to good farmers who liked to work—he didn't, and of that he made no secret. When he was at home, he usually sat upstairs in the living room, reading newspapers. He subscribed for a dozen or more—the list included a weekly devoted to scandal—and he was well informed about what was going on in the world. He had magnificent health, and illness in himself or in other people struck him as humorous. To be sure, he never suffered from anything more perplexing than toothache or boils, or an occasional bilious attack.
Wheeler gave liberally to churches and charities, was always ready to lend money or machinery to a neighbour who was short of anything. He liked to tease and shock diffident people, and had an inexhaustible supply of funny stories.
Bayliss had a farm implement business in Frankfort, and though he was still under thirty he had made a very
Once every few years, Mr. Wheeler bought a new suit and a dozen stiff shirts and went back to Maine to visit his brothers and sisters, who were very quiet, conventional people. But he was always glad to get home to his own clothes, his big farm, his buckboard, and Bayliss.
Mrs. Wheeler had come out from Vermont to be Principal of the High School, when Frankfort was a frontier town and Nat Wheeler was a prosperous bachelor. He must have fancied her for the same reason he liked his son Bayliss,—because she was so different. There was this to be said for Nat Wheeler, that he liked every sort of human creature; he liked good people and honest people, and he liked rascals and hypocrites almost to the point of loving them. If he heard that a neighbour had played a sharp trick or done something paricularly mean, he was sure to drive over to see the man at once, as if he hadn't hitherto appreciated him.
There was a large, loafing dignity about Claude's father. He liked to provoke others to uncouth laughter, but he never laughed immoderately himself. In telling stories about him, people often tried to imitate his smooth, senatorial voice, robust but never loud. Even when he was hilariously de-lighted by anything,—as when poor Mahailey, undressing in the dark on a summer night, sat down on the sticky fly-paper,—he was not boisterous. He was a jolly, easy-going father, indeed, for a boy who was not thin-skinned.
CLAUDE and his mules rattled into Frankfort just as the calliope went screaming down Maine street at the head of the circus parade. Getting rid of his disagreable freight and his uncongenial companions as soon as possible, he elbowed his way along the crowded sidewalk, looking for some of the neighbour boys. Mr. Wheeler was standing on the Farmer's Bank corner, towering a head above the throng, chaffing with a little hunchback who was setting up a shell-game. To avoid his father, Claude turned and went
"Hello," said Claude, bustling in as if he were in a great hurry. "Have you seen Ernest Havel? I thought I might find him in here."
Bayliss swung round in his swivel chair to return a plough catalogue to the shelf. "What would he be in here for?
Claude's cheeks flamed with anger. As he turned away, he noticed something unusual about his brother's face, but he wasn't going to give him the satisfaction of asking him how he had got a black eye. Ernest Havel was a Bohemian, and he usually drank a glass of beer when he came to town; but he
At that very moment Claude saw his friend on the other side of the street, following the wagon of trained dogs that brought up the rear of the procession. He ran across, through a crowd of shouting youngsters, and caught Ernest by the arm.
"Hello, where are you off to?"
"I'm going to eat my lunch before show-time. I left my wagon out by the pumping station, on the creek. What about you?"
"I've got no program. Can I go along?"
Ernest Smiled. "I expect. I've got enough lunch for two."
"Yes, I know. You always have. I'll join you later."
Claude would have liked to take Ernest to the hotel for dinner. He had more than enough money in his pockets; and his father was a rich farmer. In the Wheeler family a new thrasher or a new automobile was ordered without a question, but it was considered extravagant to go to a hotel for dinner. If his father or Bayliss heard that he had been there—and Bayliss heard everything—they would say he was putting on airs, and would get back at him. He tried to excuse his
Ernest produced his lunch basket.
"I got a couple bottles of beer cooling in the creek," he said. "I knew you wouldn't want to go in a saloon."
"Oh, forget it!" Claude muttered, ripping the cover off a jar of pickles. He was nineteen years old, and he was afraid to go into a saloon, and his friend knew he was afraid.
After lunch, Claude took out a handful of good cigars he had bought at the drugstore. Ernest, who couldn't afford cigars, was pleased. He lit one, and as he smoked he kept looking at it with an air of pride and turning it around between his fingers.
The horses stood with their heads over the wagon-box, munching their oats. The stream trickled by under the willow roots with a cool, persuasive sound. Claude and Ernest lay in the shade, their coats under their heads, talking very little. Occasionally a motor dashed along the road toward town, and a cloud of dust and a smell of gasoline blew in over the creek bottom; but for the most part the silence of the warm, lazy summer noon was undisturbed. Claude could usually forget his own vexations and chagrins when he was with Ernest. The Bohemian boy was never uncertain, was not pulled in two or three ways at once. He was simple and direct. He had a number of impersonal preoccupations; was interested in politics and history and in new inventions. Claude felt that his friend lived in an atmosphere of mental liberty to which he himself could never hope to attain. After he had talked with Ernest for awhile, the things that did not go right on the farm seemed less important.
Claude's mother was almost as fond of Ernest as he was himself. When the two boys were going to high school, Ernest often came over in the evening to study with Claude and while they worked at the long kitchen table Mrs. Wheeler brought her darning and sat near them, helping them with their Latin and algebra. Even old Mahailey was enlightened by their words of wisdom.
Mrs. Wheeler said she would never forget the night Ernest arrived from the Old Country. His brother, Joe Havel, had gone to Frankfort to meet him, and was to stop on the way home and leave some groceries for the Wheelers. The train from the east was late; it was ten o'clock that night when Mrs. Wheeler, waiting in the kitchen, heard Havel's wagon rumble across the little bridge over Lovely Creek. She opened the outside door, and presently Joe cam in with a bucket of salt fish in one hand and a sack of flour on his shoulder. While he took the fish down to the cellar for her, another figure appeared in the doorway; a young boy, short, stooped, with a flat cap on his head and a great oilcloth valise, such as pedlars carry, strapped to his back. He had fallen asleep in the wagon, and on waking and finding his brother gone, he had supposed they were at home and scrambled for his pack. He stood in the doorway, blinking his eyes at the light, looking astonished but eager to do whatever was required of him. What if one of her own boys, Mrs. Wheeler thought. . . . She went up to him and put her arm around him, laughing a little and saying in her quiet voice, just as if he could understand her, "Why, you're only a little boy after all, aren't you?"
Ernest said afterwards that it was his first welcome to this country, though he had travelled so far, and had been pushed and hauled and shouted at for so many days, he had lost
After their picnic the two boys went to the circus in a happy frame of mind. In the animal tent they met big Leonard Dawson, the oldest son of one of the Wheelers' near neighbours, and the three sat together for the performance.
Leonard was a strapping brown fellow of twenty-five, with big hands and big feet, white teeth, and flashing eyes full of energy. He and his father and two brothers not only worked their own big farm, but rented a quarter section from Nat Wheeler. They were master farmers. If there was a dry summer and a failure, Leonard only laughed and stretched his long arms, and put in a bigger crop next year. Claude was always a little reserved with Leonard; he felt that the young man was rather contemptuous of the hap-hazard way in which things were done on the Wheeler place, and thought his going to college a waste of money. Leonard had not even gone through Frankfort High School, and he was already a more successful man than Claude was ever likely to be.
At sunset the car was speeding over a fine stretch of smooth road across the level country that lay between Frankfort and the rougher land along Lovely Creek. Leonard's attention was largely given up to admiring the faultless behavior of
"I wonder if you'd take it all right if I told you a joke on Bayliss?"
"I expect I would." Claude's tone was not at all eager.
"You saw Bayliss today? Notice anything queer about him, one eye a little off colour? Did he tell you how he got it?"
"No. I didn't ask him."
"Just as well. A lot of people did ask him, though, and he said he was hunting around his place for something in the dark and ran into a reaper. Well, I'm the reaper!"
Claude looked interested. "You mean to say Bayliss was in a fight?"
Leonard laughed. "Lord, no! Don't you know Bayliss? I went in there to pay a bill yesterday, and Susie Gray and another girl came in to sell tickets for the fireman's dinner. An advance man for this circus was hanging around, and he began talking a little smart,—nothing rough, but the way such fellers will. The girls handed it back to him, and sold him three tickets to shut him up. I couldn't see how Susie thought so quick what to say. The minute the girls went out Bayliss started knocking them; said all country girls were getting too fresh and knew more than they ought to about managing sporty men—and right there I reached out and handed him one. I hit harder than I meant to. I meant to slap him, not to give him a black eye. but you can't always regulate things, and I was hot all over. I waited for him to come back at me. I'm bigger than he is, and I wanted to give him satisfaction. Well, sir, he never moved a muscle! He stood there getting redder and redder, and his eyes watered.
"Bayliss will never get over that," was Claude's only comment.
"He don't have to!" Leonard threw up his head. "I'm a good customer; he can like it or lump it, till the price of binding twine goes down!"
For the next few minutes the driver was occupied with trying to get up a long, rough hill on high gear. Sometimes he could make that hill, and sometimes he couldn't, and he was not able to account for the difference. After he pulled the second lever with some disgust and let the car amble on as she would, he noticed that his companion was disconcerted.
"I'll tell you what, Leonard," Claude spoke in a strained voice, "I think the fair thing for you to do is to get out here by the road and give me a chance."
Leonard swung his steering wheel savagely to pass a wagon on the down side of the hill. "What the devil are you talking about, boy?"
"You think you've got our measure all right, but you ought to give me a chance first."
Leonard looked down in amazement at his own big brown hands, lying on the wheel. "You mortal fool kid, what would I be telling you all this for, if I didn't know you were another breed of cats? I never thought you got on too well with Bayliss yourself."
"I don't, but I won't have you thinking you can slap the men in my family whenever you feel like it." Claude knew
Young Leonard Dawson saw he had hurt the boy's feelings. "Lord, Claude, I know you're a fighter. Bayliss never was. I went to school with him."
The ride ended amicably, but Claude wouldn't let Leonard take him home. He jumped out of the car with a curt good-night, and ran across the dusky fields toward the light that shone from the house on the hill. At the little bridge over the creek, he stopped to get his breath and to be sure that he was outwardly composed before he went in to see his mother.
"Ran against a reaper in the dark!" he muttered aloud, clenching his fist.
Listening to the deep singing of the frogs, and to the distant barking of the dogs up at the house, he grew calmer.
THE circus was on Saturday. The next morning Claude was standing at his dresser, shaving. His beard was already strong, a shade darker than his hair and not so red as his skin. His eyebrows and long lashes were a pale corn-colour—made his blue eyes seem lighter than they were, and, he thought, gave a look of shyness and
The household slept late on Sunday morning; even
"I'd like to go if I can get the work done in time," she said, doubtfully glancing at the clock.
"Can't Mahailey tend to things for you this morning?"
Mrs. Wheeler hesitated. "Everything but the separator, she can. But she can't fit all the parts together. It's a good deal of work, you know."
"Now, Mother," said Ralph good-humouredly, as he emptied the syrup pitcher over his cakes, "you're prejudiced. Nobody ever thinks of skimming milk now-a-days. Every up-to-date farmer uses a separator."
Mrs. Wheeler's pale eyes twinkled. "Mahailey and I will never be quite up-to-date, Ralph. We're old-fashioned, and I don't know but you'd better let us be. I could see the
"It won't be when you get used to it," Ralph assured her. He was the chief mechanic of the Wheeler farm, and when the farm implements and the automobiles did not give him enough to do, he went to town and bought machines for the house. As soon as Mahailey got used to a washing-machine or a churn, Ralph, to keep up with the bristling march of events, brought home a still newer one. The mechanical dish-washer she had never been able to use, and the patent flat-irons and oil-stoves drove her wild.
Claude told his mother to go upstairs and dress; he would scald the separator while Ralph got the car ready. He was still working at it when his bother came in from the garage to wash his hands.
"You really oughtn't to load mother up with things like this, Ralph," he exclaimed fretfully. "Did you ever try washing this damned thing yourself?"
"Of course I have. If Mrs. Dawson can manage it, I should think mother could."
"Mrs. Dawson is a younger woman. Anyhow, there's no point in trying to make machinists of Mahailey and mother."
Ralph lifted his eyebrows to excuse Claude's bluntness. "See here," he said persuasively, "don't you go encouraging her into thinking she can't change her ways. Mother's entitled to all the labour-saving devices we can get her."
Claude rattled the thirty-odd graduated metal funnels which he was trying to fit together in their proper sequence. "Well, if this is labour-saving—"
The younger boy giggled and ran upstairs for his panama hat. He never quarrelled. Mrs. Wheeler sometimes said it was wonderful, how much Ralph would take from Claude.
After Ralph and his mother had gone off in the car, Mr. Wheeler drove to see his German neighbour, Gus Yoeder, who had just bought a blooded bull. Dan and Jerry were pitching horseshoes down behind the barn. Claude told Mahailey he was going to the cellar to put up the swinging shelf she had been wanting, so that the rats couldn't get at her vegetables.
"Thank you, Mr. Claude. I don't know what does make the rats so bad. The cats catches one most everyday, too."
"I guess they come up from the barn. I've got a nice wide board down at the garage for your shelf."
The cellar was cemented, cool and dry, with deep closets for canned fruit and flour and groceries, bins for coal and cobs, and a dark-room full of photographer's apparatus. Claude took his place at the carpenter's bench under one of the square windows. Mysterious objects stood about him in the grey twilight; electric batteries, old bicycles and
While Claude was planing off the board he meant to suspend from the joists, Mahailey left her work and came down to watch him. She made some pretence of hunting for pickled onions, then seated herself upon a cracker box; close at hand there was a plush "spring-rocker" with one arm gone, but it wouldn't have been her idea of good manners to sit there. Her eyes had a kind of sleepy contentment in them as she followed Claude's motions. She watched him as if he were a baby playing. Her hands lay comfortably in her lap.
"Mr. Ernest ain't been over for a long time. He ain't mad about nothin', is he?"
"Oh, no! He's awful busy this summer. I saw him in town yesterday. We went to the circus together."
Mahailey smiled and nodded. "That's nice. I'm glad for you two boys to have a good time. Mr. Ernest's a nice boy; I always liked him first rate. He's a little feller, though. He ain't big like you, is he? I quess he ain't as tall as Mr. Ralph, even."
"Not quite," said Claude between strokes. "He's strong, though, and gets through a lot of work."
"Oh, I know! I know he is. I know he works hard. All them foreigners work hard, don't they, Mr. Claude? I reckon he liked the circus. Maybe they don't have circuses like our'n, over where he come from."
Claude began to tell her about the clown elephant and the trained dogs, and she sat listening to him with her pleased, foolish smile; there was something wise and far-seeing about her smile, too.
Mahailey had come to them long ago, when Claude was only a few months old. She had been brought West by a shiftless Virginia family which went to pieces and scattered under the rigours of pioneer farm-life. When the mother of the family died, there was nowhere for Mahailey to go, and Mrs. Wheeler took her in. Mahailey had no one to take care of her, and Mrs. Wheeler had no one to help her with the work; it had turned out very well.
Mahailey had had a hard life in her young days, married to a savage mountaineer who often abused her and never provided for her. She could remember times when she sat in the cabin, beside an empty meal-barrel and a cold iron pot, waiting for "him" to bring home a squirrel he had shot or a chicken he had stolen. Too often he brought nothing but
Mahailey was shrewd in her estimate of people, and Claude thought her judgment sound in a good many things. He knew she sensed all the shades of personal feeling, the accords and antipathies in the household, as keenly as he did, and he would have hated to lose her good opinion. She consulted him in all her little difficulties. If the leg of the kitchen table got
On days like this, when other people were not about,
THE time was approaching for Claude to go back to the struggling denominational college on the
"Mother," he said one morning when he had an opportunity to speak to her alone, "I wish you would let me quit the Temple, and go to the State University."
She looked up from the mass of dough she was kneading.
"But why, Claude?"
"Well, I could learn more, for one thing. The professors at the Temple aren't much good. Most of them are just preachers who couldn't make a living at preaching."
The look of pain that always alarmed Claude came instantly into his mother's face. "Son, don't say such things. I can't believe but teachers are more interested in their students when they are concerned for their spirtual development, as well as the mental. Brother Weldon said many of the professors at the State University are not Christian men; they even boast of it, in some cases."
"Oh, I guess most of them are good men, all right; at any rate they know their subjects. These little pin-headed
"But how can there be any serious study where they give so much time to athletics and frivolity? They pay their football coach a larger salary than their Chancellor. And those
Claude made no reply. He stood before her frowning and pulling at the calloused spot on the inside of his palm. Mrs. Wheeler looked at him wistfully. "I'm sure you must be able to study better in a quiet, serious atmosphere," she said.
He sighed and turned away. If his mother had been the least bit unctuous, like Brother Weldon, he could have told her many enlightening facts. But she was so trusting and child-like, so faithful by nature and so ignorant of life as he knew it, that it was hopeless to argue with her. He could shock her and make her fear the world even more than she did, but he could never make her understand.
His mother was old-fashioned. She thought dancing and card-playing dangerous pastimes—only rough people did such things when she was a girl in Vermont—and "worldliness" only another word for wickedness. According to her conception of education, one should learn, not think; and above all, one must not enquire. The history of the human race, as it lay behind one, was already explained; and so was its destiny, which lay before. The mind should remain obediently within the
Nat Wheeler didn't care where his son went to school, but he, too, took it for granted that the religious institution was cheaper than the State University; and that because students there looked shabbier they were less likely to become too
"Claude's got some notion he wants to go to the State University this winter."
Bayliss at once assumed that wise, better-be-prepared-for-the-worst expression which made him seem shrewd and seasoned from boyhood. "I don't see any point in changing unless he's got good reasons."
"Well, he thinks that bunch of parsons at the Temple don't make first-rate teachers."
"I expect they can teach Claude quite a bit yet. If he gets in with that fast football crowd at the State, there'll be no
That night Mr. Wheeler brought the subject up at supper, questioned Claude, and tried to get at the cause of his
Claude might have enjoyed the large and somewhat gross cartoons with which Mr. Wheeler enlivened daily life, had they been of any authorship. But he unreasonably wanted his father to be the most dignified, as he was certainly the
Claude had never quite forgiven his father for some of his practical jokes. One warm spring day, when he was a
Mrs. Wheeler trustfully put on her sunbonnet, gave Claude a little pail and took a big one herself, and they went down the pasture hill to the orchard, fenced in on the low land by the creek. The ground had been ploughed that spring to make it hold moisture, and Claude was running happily along in one of the furrows, when he looked up and beheld a sight he could never forget. The beautiful, round-topped cherry tree, full of green leaves and red fruit,—his father had sawed it through! It lay on the ground beside its bleeding stump. With one scream Claude became a little demon. He threw his tin pail, jumped about howling and kicking the loose earth with his
"Son, son," she cried, "it's your father's tree. He has a
"'Tain't so! He's a damn fool, damn fool!" Claude bellowed, still hopping and kicking, almost choking with rage and hate.
His mother dropped on her knees beside him. "Claude, stop! I'd rather have the whole orchard cut down than hear you say such things."
After she got him quieted they picked the cherries and went back to the house. Claude had promised her that he would say nothing, but his father must have noticed the little boy's angry eyes fixed upon him all through dinner, and his expression of scorn. Even then his flexible lips were only too well adapted to hold the picture of that feeling. For days afterwards Claude went down to the orchard and watched the tree grow sicker, wilt and wither away. God would surely punish a man who could do that, he thought.
A violent temper and physical restlessness were the most conspicuous things about Claude when he was a little boy. Ralph was docile, and had a precocious sagacity for keeping out of trouble. Quiet in manner, he was fertile in devising mischief, and easily persuaded his older brother, who was
The usual hardships of country boyhood were not enough for Claude; he imposed physical tests and penances upon himself. Whenever he burned his finger, he followed Mahailey's advice and held his hand close to the stove to "draw out the fire." One year he went to school all winter in his jacket, to make
CLAUDE waited for his elders to change their mind about where he should go to school; but no one seemed much concerned, not even his mother.
Two years ago, the young man whom Mrs. Wheeler called "Brother Weldon" had come out from Lincoln, preaching in little towns and country churches, and recruiting students for the institution at which he taught in the winter. He had
Claude's mother was not discriminating about preachers. She believed them all chosen and sanctified, and was never happier than when she had one in the house to cook for and wait upon. She made young Mr. Weldon so comfortable that he remained under her roof for several weeks, occupying the spare room, where he spent the mornings in study and
Claude disliked this young man from the moment he first met him, and could scarcely answer him civilly. Mrs. Wheeler, always absent-minded, and now absorbed in her cherishing care of the visitor, did not notice Claude's scornful silences until Mahailey, whom such things never escaped, whispered to her over the stove one day: "Mr. Claude, he don't like the preacher. He just ain't got no use fur him, but don't you let on."
As a result of Brother Weldon's sojourn at the farm, Claude was sent to the Temple College. Claude had come to believe that the things and people he most disliked were the ones that were to shape his destiny.
When the second week of September came round, he threw a few clothes and books into his trunk and said good-bye to his mother and mahailey. Ralph took him into Frankfort to catch the train for Lincoln. After settling himself in the dirty day-coach, Claude fell to meditating upon his prospects. There was a Pullman car on the train, but to take a Pullman for a daylight journey was one of the things a Wheeler did not do.
Claude knew that he was going back to the wrong school, that he was wasting both time and money. He sneered at
The Chapin household consisted of a brother and sister. Edward Chapin was a man of twenty-six, with an old, wasted face,—and he was still going to school, studying for the
Chapin had been going to the Temple College for four years, and it would probably take him two years more to complete the course. He conned his book on trolley-cars, or while he waited by the track on windy corners, and studied far into the night. His natural stupidity must have been something quite out of the ordinary; after years of reverential study, he could not read the Greek Testament without a lexicon and grammar at his elbow. He gave a great deal of time to the practise of elocution and oratory. At certain hours their frail domicile—it had been thinly built for the academic poor and sat upon concrete blocks in lieu of a foundation—re-echoed with his hoarse, overstrained voice, declaiming his own orations or whose of Wendell Phillips.
Annabelle Chapin was one of Claude's classmates. She was not as dull as her brother; she could learn a conjugation and recognize the forms when she met with them again. But she was a gushing, silly girl, who found almost everything in their grubby life too good to be true; and she was, unfortunately, sentimental about Claude. Annabelle chanted her lessons over and over to herself while she cooked and srubbed. She was one of those people who can make the finest things seem tame
Mrs. Wheeler liked to feel that Claude was assisting this worthy pair in their struggle for an education; but he had long ago decided that since neither of the Chapins got
The boy felt bitterly about the way in which he had been brought up, and about his hair and his freckles and his
Nevertheless, Claude thought he could recognize a well-dressed man when he saw one. He even thought he could recognize a well-dressed woman. If an attractive woman got into the street car when he was on his way to or from Temple Place, he was distracted between the desire to look at her and the wish to seem indifferent.
Claude is on his way back to Lincoln, with a fairly liberal allowance which does not contribute much to his comfort or pleasure. He has no friends or instructors whom he can
THREE months later, on a grey December day, Claude was seated in the passenger coach of an
Claude went into a restaurant across the street and ordered an oyster stew. The proprietress, a plump little German
"I been lookin' for you every day," said Mrs. Voigt when she brought his plate. "I put plenty good gravy on dem sweet pertaters, ja."
"Thank you. You must be popular with your boarders."
She giggled. "Ja, all de train men is friends mit me.
She stood nursing her stumpy hands under her apron,
After his freight train got under steam he did not open his books again, but sat looking out at the grey homesteads as they unrolled before him, with their stripped, dry cornfields, and the great ploughed stretches where the winter wheat was asleep. A starry sprinkling of snow lay like hoar-frost along the crumbly ridges between the furrows.
Claude believed he knew almost every farm between
Claude was reflecting upon the fact that he had never gone home before in such good spirits. Two fortunate things had happened to him since he went over this road three months ago.
As soon as he reached Lincoln in September, he had
Claude usually came out from these lectures with the feeling
The second good thing that had befallen him was that he had got to know some people he liked. This came about
Claude had a proud moment, but even while coach
Julius Erlich, who played quarter on the State team, took him aside and said affably: "Come home to supper with me
"They're hardly clothes to go visiting in," Claude replied doubtfully.
"Oh, that doesn't matter! We're all boys at home. Mother wouldn't mind if you came in your track things."
Claude consented before he had time to frighten himself by imagining difficulties. The Erlich boy often sat next him in the history class, and they had several times talked together. Hitherto Claude had felt that he "couldn't make Erlich out," but this afternoon, while they dressed after their shower, they became good friends, all in a few minutes. Claude was perhaps less tied-up in mind and body than usual. He was so astonished at finding himself on easy, confidential terms with Erlich that he scarcely gave a thought to his second-day shirt and his collar with a broken edge,—wretched economies he had been trained to observe.
They had not walked more than two blocks from the Armory when Julius turned in at a rambling wooden house with an unfenced, terraced lawn. He led Claude around to the wing, and through a glass door into a big room that was all windows on three sides, above the wainscoting. The room was full of boys and young men, seated on long divans or perched on the arms of easy chairs, and they were all talking at once. On one of the couches a young man in a smoking jacket lay reading as composedly as if he were alone.
"Five of these are my brothers," said his host, "and the rest are friends."
The company recognized Claude and included him in their talk about the game. When the visitors had gone, Julius
On a table in the middle of the room were pipes boxes of tobacco, cigars in a glass jar, and a big Chinese bowl full of cigarettes. This provisionment seemed the more
Julius brought in his mother, and when they went to supper Claude was seated beside her at one end of the long table. Mrs. Erlich seemed to him very young to be the head of such a family. Her hair was still brown, and she wore it drawn over her ears and twisted in two little horns, like the ladies in old daguerrotypes. Her face, too, suggested a
The boys were discussing an engagement that had just been announced, and Mrs. Erlich began to tell Claude a long story about how this brilliant young man had come to Lincoln and met this beautiful young girl, who was already engaged to a cold and academic youth, and how after many heart-burnings the beautiful girl had broken with the wrong man and become betrothed to the right one, and now they were so happy,—and every one, she asked Claude to believe, was equally happy! In the middle of her narrative Julius reminded her smilingly that since Claude didn't know these people, he would hardly be interested in their romance, but she merely looked at him over her nose-glasses and said, "And is that so, Herr Julius!" One could see that she was a match for them.
The conversation went racing from one thing to another. The brothers began to argue hotly about a new girl who was visiting in town; whether she was pretty, how pretty she was, whether she was naïve. To Claude this was like talk in a play. He had never heard a living person discussed and analysed thus before. He had never heard a family talk so much, or with anything like so much zest. Here there was none of the poisonous reticence he had always associated with family gatherings, nor the awkwardness of people sitting with their hands in their lap, facing each other, each one guarding his secret or his suspicion, while he hunted for a safe subject to talk about. Their fertility of phrase, too, astonished him; how could people find so much to say about one girl? To be sure, a good deal of it sounded far-fetched to him, but he sadly admitted that in such matters he was no judge.
When they went back to the living room Julius began to pick out airs on his guitar, and the bearded brother sat down to read. Otto, the youngest, seeing a group of students passing the house, ran out on the lawn and called them in,—two boys, and a girl with red cheeks and a fur stole. Claude had made for a corner, and was perfectly content to be an on-looker, but Mrs. Erlich soon came and seated herself beside him. When the doors into the parlour were opened, she noticed his eyes straying to an engraving of Napoleon which hung over the piano, and made him go and look at it. She told him it was a rare engraving, and she showed him a portrait of her great-grandfather, who was an officer in Napoleon's army. To explain how this came about was a long story.
As she talked to Claude, Mrs. Erlich discovered that his eyes were not really pale, but only looked so because of his light lashes. They could say a great deal when they looked squarely into hers, and she liked what they said. She soon found out that he was discontented; how he hated the Temple school, and why his mother wished him to go there.
When the three who had been called in from the sidewalk took their leave, Claude rose also. They were evidently familiars of the house, and their careless exit, with a gay "Good-night, everybody!" gave him no practical suggestion as to what he ought to say or how he was to get out. Julius made things more difficult by telling him to sit down, as it wasn't time to go yet. But Mrs. Erlich said it was time; he would have a long ride out to Temple Place.
It was really very easy. She walked to the door with him and gave him his hat, patting his arm in a final way. "You will come often to see us. We are going to be friends." Her forehead, with its neat curtains of brown hair, came something
"It's been lovely," he murmured to her, quite without
While the freight train was puffing slowly across the winter country, leaving a black trail suspended in the still air, Claude went over that experience minutely in his mind, as if he feared to lose something of it on approaching home. He could
Since that first visit, he had gone to the Erlichs', not as often as he wished, certainly, but as often as he dared. Some of the University boys seemed to drop in there whenever they felt like it, were almost members of the family; but they were better looking than he, and better company. To be sure, long Baumgartner was an intimate of the house, and he was
Claude didn't wish to be a bore. Sometimes in the evening, when he left the Library to smoke a cigar, he walked slowly past the Erlichs' house, looking at the lighted windows of the sitting-room and wondering what was going on inside. Before he went there to call, he racked his brain for things to talk about. If there had been a football game, or a good play at the theatre, that helped, of course.
Almost without realizing what he was doing, he tried to think things out and to justify his opinions to himself, so that he would have something to say when the Erlich boys
But all the people he met at the Erlichs' talked. If they asked him about a play or a book and he said it was "no good," they at once demanded why. The Erlichs thought him a clam, but Claude sometimes thought himself amazing. Could it really be he, who was airing his opinions in this indelicate
Claude couldn't resist occasionally dropping in at the Erlichs' in the afternoon; then the boys were away, and he could have Mrs. Erlich to himself for half-an-hour. When she talked to him she taught him so much about life. He loved to hear her sing sentimental German songs as she worked;
He had been to see Mrs. Erlich just before starting home for the holidays, and found her making German Christmas cakes. She took him into the kitchen and explained the almost holy traditions that governed this complicated cookery. Her excitement and seriousness as she beat and stirred were very pretty, Claude thought. She told off on her fingers the many ingredients, but he believed there were things she did not name: the fragrance of old friendships, the glow of early memories, belief in wonder-working rhymes and songs. Surely these were fine things to put into little cakes! After Claude left her, he did something a Wheeler didn't do; he went down to O street and sent her a box of the reddest roses he could find. In his pocket was the little note she had written to thank him.
IT was beginning to grow dark when Claude reached the farm. While Ralph stopped to put away the car, he walked on alone to the house. He never came back without emotion,—try as he would to pass lightly over these departures and returns which were all in the day's work. When he came up the hill like this, toward the tall house with its lighted windows, something always clutched at his heart. He both loved and hated to come home. He was always disappointed, and yet he always felt the rightness of
Approaching the door, Claude stopped a moment and peered in at the kitchen window. The table was set for supper, and Mahailey was at the stove, stirring something in a big iron pot; cornmeal mush, probably,—she often made it for herself now that her teeth had begun to fail. She stood leaning over, embracing the pot with one arm, and with the other she beat the still contents, nodding her head in time to this rotary movement. Confused emotions surged up in Claude. He went in quickly and gave her a bearish hug.
Her face wrinkled up in the foolish grin he knew so well. "Lord, how you scared me, Mr. Claude! A little more'n I'd 'a' had mush all over the floor. You lookin' fine, you nice boy, you!"
He knew Mahailey was gladder to see him come home than any one except his mother. Hearing Mrs. Wheeler's wander-ing, uncertain steps in the enclosed stairway, he opened the door and ran halfway up to meet her, putting his arm about her with the almost painful tenderness he always felt, but seldom was at liberty to show. She reached up both hands and stroked his hair for a moment, laughing as one does to a little boy, and telling him she believed it was redder every time he came back.
"Have we got all the corn in, Mother?"
"No, Claude, we haven't. You know we're always behind-hand. It's been fine, open weather for husking, too. But at least we've got rid of that miserable Jerry; so there's
"I guess so. Did he hurt the horse much? Which one was it?"
"The little black, Pompey. I believe he is rather a mean horse. The men said one of the bones over the eye was broken, but he would probably come around all right."
"Pompey isn't mean; he's nervous. All the horses hated Jerry, and they had good reason to." Claude jerked his
Mr. Wheeler came into the kitchen and stopped on his way upstairs long enough to say, "Hello, Claude. You look pretty well."
"Yes, sir. I'm all right, thank you."
"Bayliss tells me you've been playing football a good deal."
"Not more than usual. We played half a dozen games; generally got licked. The State has a fine team, though."
"I ex-pect," Mr. Wheeler drawled as he strode upstairs.
Supper went as usual. Dan kept grinning and blinking at Claude, trying to discover whether he had already been
After supper Ralph and Mr. Wheeler went off in the car to a Christmas entertainment at the country schoolhouse. Claude and his mother sat down for a quiet talk by the hard-coal burner in the living room upstairs. Claude liked this room, especially when his father was not there. The old carpet, the faded chairs, the secretary book-case, the spotty engraving with all the scenes from Pilgrim's Progress that hung over the sofa,—these things made him feel at home. Ralph was always proposing to re-furnish the room in Mission oak, but so far Claude and his mother had saved it.
Claude drew up his favourite chair and began to tell Mrs. Wheeler about the Erlich boys and their mother. She
Claude had gone through a painful time of doubt and fear when he thought a great deal about religion. For several years, from fourteen to eighteen, he believed that he would be lost if he did not repent and undergo that mysterious change called conversion. But there was something stubborn in him that would not let him avail himself of the pardon offered. He felt condemned, but he did not want to renounce a world he as yet knew nothing of. He would like to go into life with all his vigour, with all his faculties free. He didn't want to be like the young men who said in prayer-meetings that they leaned on their Saviour. He hated their way of meekly
In those days Claude had a sharp physical fear of death. A funeral, the sight of a neighbour lying rigid in his black coffin, overwhelmed him with terror. He used to lie awake in the dark, plotting against death, trying to devise some plan of escaping it, angrily wishing he had never been born. Was there no way out of the world but this? When he thought of the millions of lonely creatures rotting away under ground,
If anything could cure an intelligent boy of morbid
Though he wanted little to do with theology and theologians, Claude would have said that he was a Christian. He believed in God, and in the spirit of the four Gospels, and in the Sermon on the Mount. He used to halt and stumble at, "Blessed are the meek," until one day he happened to think that this verse was meant exactly for people like Mahailey; and surely she was blessed!
ON the Sunday after Christmas Claude and Ernest were walking along the banks of Lovely Creek. They had been as far as Mr. Wheeler's timber claim and back. It was like an autumn afternoon, so warm that they left their overcoats on the limb of a crooked elm by the pasture fence. The fields and the bare tree-tops seemed to be swimming in light. A few brown leaves still clung to the bushy trees along the creek. In the upper pasture, more than a mile from the house, the boys found a bittersweet vine that wound about a little dogwood and covered it with scarlet
When they left the spot and climbed back to the level, Claude
"What are you going to do after a while, Ernest? Do you mean to farm all your life?"
"Naturally. If I were going to learn a trade, I'd be at it before now. What makes you ask that?"
"Oh, I don't know! I suppose people must think about the future sometime. And you're so practical."
"The future, eh?" Ernest shut one eye and smiled. "That's a big word. After I get a place of my own and have a good start, I'm going home to see my folks some winter. Maybe I'll marry a nice girl and bring her back."
"Is that all?"
"That's enough, if it turns out right, isn't it?"
"Perhaps. It wouldn't be for me. I don't believe I can ever settle down to anything. Don't you feel that at this rate there isn't much in it?"
"In what?"
"In living at all, going on as we do. What do we get out of it? Take a day like this: you waken up in the morning and you're glad to be alive; it's a good enough day for
"But what do you expect? What can happen to you, except in your own mind? If I get through my work, and get an afternoon off to see my friends like this, it's enough for me."
"Is it? Well, if we've only got once to live, it seems like there ought to be something—well, something splendid about life, sometimes."
Ernest was sympathetic now. He drew nearer to Claude
"The martyrs must have found something outside themselves. Otherwise they could have made themselves comfortable with little things."
"Why, I should say they were the ones who had nothing but their idea! It would be ridiculous to get burned at the stake for the sensation. Sometimes I think the martyrs had a good deal of vanity to help them along, too."
Claude thought Ernest had never been so tiresome. He squinted at a bright object across the fields and said cuttingly, "The fact is, Ernest, you think a man ought to be satisfied with his board and clothes and Sundays off, don't you?"
Ernest laughed rather mournfully. "It doesn't matter much what I think about it; things are as they are. Nothing is going to reach down from the sky and pick a man up, I guess."
Claude muttered something to himself, twisting his chin about over his collar as if he had a bridle-bit in his mouth.
The sun dropped low, and the two boys, as Mrs. Wheeler watched them from the kitchen window, seemed to be walking beside a prairie fire. She smiled as she saw their black figures moving along on the crest of the hill against the golden sky; even at that distance the one looked so adaptable, and the other so unyielding. They were arguing, probably, and probably Claude was on the wrong side.
AFTER the vacation Claude again settled down to his reading in the University Library. He worked at a table next the alcove where the books on painting and sculpture were kept. The art students, all of whom were girls, read and whispered together in this enclosure, and he could enjoy their company without having to talk to them. They were lively and friendly; they often asked him to lift heavy books and portfolios from the shelves, and greeted him gaily when he met them in the street or on the campus, and talked to him with the easy cordiality usual between boys and girls in a co-educational school. One of these girls, Miss Peachy Millmore, was different from the others,—different from any girl Claude had ever known. She came from Georgia, and was spending the winter with her aunt on B street.
Although she was short and plump, Miss Millmore moved with what might be called a "carriage," and she had altogether more manner and more reserve than the Western girls. Her hair was yellow and curly,—the short ringlets about her eyes were just the colour of a new chicken. Her vivid blue eyes were a trifle too prominent, and a generous blush of colour mantled her cheeks. It seemed to pulsate there,—one had a desire to touch her cheeks to see if they were hot. The Erlich brothers and their friends called her "the Georgia peach." She was considered very pretty, and the University boys had rushed her when she first came to town. Since then her vogue had somewhat declined.
Miss Millmore often lingered about the campus to walk down
Claude looked forward to seeing Peachy Millmore, missed her if she were not in the alcove, found it quite natural that she should explain her absences to him,—tell him how often she washed her hair and how long it was when she uncoiled it.
One Friday in February Julius Erlich overtook Claude on the campus and proposed that they should try the skating tomorrow.
"Yes, I'm going out," Claude replied. "I've promised to teach Miss Millmore to skate. Won't you come along and help me?"
Julius laughed indulgently. "Oh, no! Some other time. I don't want to break in on that."
"Nonsense! You could teach her better than I."
"Oh, I haven't the courage!"
"What do you mean?"
"You know what I mean."
"No, I don't. Why do you always laugh about that girl, anyhow?"
Julius made a little grimace. "She wrote some awfully slushy letters to Phil Bowen, and he read them aloud at the frat house one night."
"Didn't you slap him?" Claude demanded, turning red.
"Well, I would have thought I would," said Julius smiling, "but I didn't. They were too silly to make a fuss about. I've been wary of the Georgia peach ever since. If you touched that sort of peach ever so lightly, it might remain in your hand."
"I don't think so," replied Claude haughtily. "She's only kind-hearted."
"Perhaps you're right. But I'm terribly afraid of girls who are too kind-hearted," Julius confessed. He had wanted to drop Claude a word of warning for some time.
Claude kept his engagement with Miss Millmore. He took her out to the skating pond several times, indeed, though in the beginning he told her he feared her ankles were too weak. Their last excursion was made by moonlight, and after that evening Claude avoided Miss Millmore when he could do so without being rude. She was attractive to him no more. It was her way to subdue by clinging contact. One could scarcely call it design; it was a degree less subtle than that. She had already thus subdued a pale cousin in Atlanta, and it was on this account that she had been sent North. She had, Claude angrily admitted, no reserve,—though when one first met her she seemed to have so much. Her eager
THE Elrich family loved anniversaries, birthdays, occasions. That spring Mrs. Erlich's first cousin, Wilhelmina Schroeder-Schatz, who sang with the Chicago Opera Company, came to Lincoln as soloist for the May Festival. As the date of her engagement approached, her relatives began planning to entertain her. The Matinée
One evening when her sons were revising their list, Mrs. Erlich reminded them that she had not as yet named her guest. "For me," she said with decision, "you may put down Claude Wheeler."
This announcement was met with groans and laughter.
"You don't mean it, Mother," the oldest son protested. "Poor old Claude wouldn't know what it was all about,—and one stick can spoil a dinner party."
Mrs. Erlich shook her finger at him with conviction. "You will see; your cousin Wilhelmina will be more interested in that boy than in any of the others!"
Julius thought if she were not too strongly opposed she might still yield her point. "For one thing, Mother, Claude hasn't any dinner clothes," he murmured.
She nodded to him. "That has been attended to, Herr Julius. He is having some made. When I sounded him, he told me he could easily afford it."
The boys said if things had gone as far as that, they
If the Erlich boys were apprehensive, their anxiety was nothing to Claude's. He was to take Mrs. Erlich to Madame Shroeder-Schatz's recital, and on the evening of the concert, when he appeared at the door, the boys dragged him in to look him over. Otto turned on all the lights, and Mrs. Erlich, in her new black lace over white satin, fluttered into the
Claude pulled off his overcoat as he was bid, and presented himself in the sooty blackness of fresh broadcloth. Mrs. Erlich's eyes swept his long black legs, his smooth shoulders, and lastly his square red head, affectionately inclined toward her. She laughed and clapped her hands.
"Now all the girls will turn round in their seats to look, and wonder where I got him."
Claude began to bestow her belongings in his overcoat pockets; opera glasses in one, fan in another. She put a lorgnette into her little bag, along with her powder-box,
The dinner party came off the next evening. The guest of honour, Madame Wilhelmina Schroeder-Schatz, was some years younger than her cousin, Augusta Erlich. She was short, stalwart, with an enormous chest, a fine head, and a commanding presence. Her great contralto voice, which she used without much discretion, was a really superb organ and gave people a pleasure as substantial as food and drink. At dinner she sat on the right of the oldest son. Claude, beside Mrs. Erlich at the other end of the table, watched attentively the lady attired in green velvet and blazing
After dinner, as Madame Schroeder-Schatz swept out of the dining room, she dropped her cousin's arm and stopped
"If cousin Augusta can spare you, we must have a little talk together. We have been very far separated," she said.
She led Claude to one of the window seats in the
"Draft?" she said lifting her chin, "there is no draft here."
She asked Claude where he lived, how much land his father owned, what crops they raised, and about their poultry and dairy. When she was a child she had lived on a farm in Bavaria, and she seemed to know a good deal about farming and live-stock. She was disapproving when Claude told her they rented half their land to other farmers. "If I were a young man, I would begin to acquire land, and I would not stop until I had a whole country," she declared. She said that
Later in the evening Madame Schroeder-Schatz graciously consented to sing for her cousins. When she sat down to the piano, she beckoned Claude and asked him to turn for her. He shook his head, smiling ruefully.
"I'm sorry I'm so stupid, but I don't know one note from another."
She tapped his sleeve. "Well, never mind. I may want the piano moved yet; you could do that for me, eh?"
When Madame Schroeder-Schatz was in Mrs. Erlich's bedroom, powdering her nose before she put on her wraps, she remarked, "What a pity, Augusta, that you have not a daughter now, to marry to Claude Melnotte. He would make you a perfect son-in-law."
"Ah, if I only had!" sighed Mrs. Erlich.
"Or," continued Madame Schroeder-Schatz, energetically pulling on her large carriage shoes, "if you were but a few years younger, it might not be too late. Oh, don't be a fool, Augusta! Such things have happened, and will
Having put on a first velvet coat, then a fur mantle, Madame Schroeder-Schatz moved like a galleon out into the living room and kissed all her cousins, and Claude Wheeler, good-night.
ONE warm afternoon in May Claude sat in his
Indeed, Claude put a great deal of time and thought upon the matter, and for the time being it seemed quite the most important thing in his life. He worked from an English translation of the Procès, but he kept the French text at his elbow, and some of her replies haunted him in the language in which they were spoken. It seemed to him that they were like the speech of her saints, of whom Jeanne said, "the voice is beautiful, sweet and low, and it speaks in the French tongue." Claude flattered himself that he had kept all personal feeling out of the paper; that it was a cold estimate of the girl's motives and character as indicated by the consistency and
When he had copied the last page of his manuscript and sat contemplating the pile of written sheets, he felt that after all his conscientious study he really knew very little more
It was a curious thing, he reflected, that a character could perpetuate itself thus; by a picture, a word, a phrase, it could renew itself in every generation and be born over and over agin in the minds of children. At that time he had never seen a map of France, and had a very poor opinion of any place farther away than Chicago; yet he was perfectly prepared for the legend of Joan of Arc, and often thought about her when he was bringing in his cobs in the evening, or when he was sent to the windmill for water and stood shaking in the cold while the chilled pump brought it slowly up. He pictured her then very much as he did now; about her figure there gathered a luminous cloud, like dust, with soldiers in it....the banner with lilies....a great church....cities with walls.
On this balmy spring afternoon, Claude felt softened and reconciled to the world. Like Gibbon, he was sorry to have finished his labour,—and he could not see anything else as
He rose with a sigh and began to fasten his history papers between covers. Glancing out of the window, he decided that he would walk into town and carry his thesis, which was due today; the weather was too fine to sit bumping in a street car. The truth was, he wished to prolong his relations with his manuscript as far as possible.
He struck off by the road,—it could scarcely be called a streed, since it ran across raw prairie land where the buffalo-peas were in blossom. Claude walked slower than was his
On reaching the University, he went directly to the Department of European History, where he was to leave his thesis on a long table, with a pile of others. He rather dreaded this, and was glad when, just as he entered, the Professor came out from his private office and took the bound manuscript into his own hands, nodding cordially.
"Your thesis? Oh yes, Jeanne d'Arc. The Procès. I had forgotten. Interesting material, isn't it?" He opened the cover and ran over the pages. "I suppose you acquitted her on the evidence."
Claude blushed. "Yes, sir."
"Well, now you might read what Michelet has to say about
"I did, very much." Claude wished to heaven he could think of something to say.
"You've got a good deal out of your course, altogether, haven't you? I'll be interested to see what you do next year. Your work has been very satisfactory to me." The Professor went back into his study, and Claude was pleased to see that he carried the manuscript with him and did not leave it on the table with the others.
BETWEEN haying and harvest that summer Ralph and Mr. Wheeler drove to Denver in the big car, leaving Claude and Dan to cultivate the corn. When they
On the return trip from Denver Mr. Wheeler had made a detour down into Yucca county, Colorado, to visit an old friend who was in difficulties. Tom Wested was a Maine man, from Wheeler's own neighbourhood. Several years ago he had lost his wife. Now his health had broken down, and the Denver doctors said he must retire from business and get into a low altitude. He wanted to go back to Maine and live among his own people, but was too much discouraged and frightened about his condition even to undertake the sale of his ranch and live stock. Mr. Wheeler had been able to help his friend, and at the same time did a good stroke of business for himself. He owned a farm in Maine, his share of his father's estate, which for years he had rented for little more than the up-keep. By making over this property, and
All this Mr. Wheeler explained to his family when he called them up to the living room one hot, breathless night after supper. Mrs. Wheeler, who seldom concerned herself with her husband's business affairs, asked absently why they bought more land, when they already had so much they could not farm half of it.
"Just like a woman, Evangeline, just like a woman!" Mr. Wheeler replied indulgently. He was sitting in the full glare of the acetyline lamp, his neck-band open, his collar and tie on the table beside him, fanning himself with a palm-leaf fan. "You might as well ask me why I want to make more money, when I haven't spent all I've got."
He intended, he said, to put Ralph on the Colorado ranch and "give the boy some responsibility." Ralph would have the help of Wested's foreman, an old hand in the cattle business, who had agreed to stay on under the new
"If Ralph is to live in Colorado, and you are to be away from home half of the time, I don't see what is to become of this place," murmured Mrs. Wheeler, still in the dark.
"Not necessary for you to see, Evangeline," her husband replied, stretching his big frame until the rocking chair creaked under him. "It will be Claude's business to look after that."
"Claude?" Mrs. Wheeler brushed a lock of hair back from her damp forehead in a vague alarm.
"Of course." He looked with twinkling eyes at his son's straight, silent figure in the corner. "You've had about enough theology, I presume? No ambition to be a preacher? This winter I meant to turn the farm over to you and give you a chance to straighten things out. You've been dissatisfied with the way the place is run for some time, haven't you? Go ahead and put new blood into it. New ideas, if you want to; I've no objection. they're expensive, but let it go. You can fire Dan if you want, and get what help you need."
Claude felt as if a trap had been sprung on him. He shaded his eyes with his hand. "I don't think I'm competent to run the place right," he said unsteadily.
"Well, you don't think I am either, Claude, so we're up against it. It's always been my notion that the land was made for man, just as it's old Dawson's that man was created to work the land. I don't mind your siding with the Dawsons in this difference of opinion, if you can get their results."
Mrs. Wheeler rose and slipped quickly from the room,
She remembered kind Tom Wested. He had stayed over-
Yet all this would weigh nothing in the family councils—probably he would not even speak of it—and he had not one substantial objection to offer to his father's wishes. His
She had left the sitting-room because she was afraid Claude might get angry and say something hard to his father, and because she couldn't bear to see him hectored. Claude had always found life hard to live; he suffered so much over little things,—and she suffered with him. For herself, she never felt disappointments. Her husband's careless decisions did not disconcert her. If he declared that he would not plant a garden at all this year, she made no protest. It was
It had always been so. And now, as she grew older, and her flesh had almost ceased to be concerned with pain or pleasure, like the wasted wax images in old churches, it still vibrated with his feelings and became quick again for him. His chagrins shrivelled her. When he was hurt and suffered silently, something ached in her. On the other hand, when he was hapy, a wave of physical contentment went through her. If she wakened in the night and happened to think that he had been happy lately, she would lie softly and gratefully in her warm place.
"Rest, rest perturbéd spirit," she sometimes whispered to him in her mind, when she wakened thus and thought of him. There was singular light in his eyes when he smiled at her on one of his good days, as if to tell her that all was well in his inner kingdom. She had seen that same look again and again, and she could always remember it in the dark,—a quick blue flash, tender and a little wild, as if he had seen a vision or glimpsed bright uncertainties.
THE next few weeks were busy ones on the farm. Before the wheat harvest was over, Nat Wheeler packed his leather trunk, put on his "store clothes," and set off to take Tom Wested back to Maine. During his absence Ralph began to outfit for life in Yucca county. Ralph liked being a great man with the Frankfort merchants, and he had never before had such an opportunity as this. He bought a new shot gun, saddles, bridles, boots, long and short storm coats, a set of furniture for his own room, a fireless cooker, another music machine, and had them shipped to Colorado. His mother, who did not like phonograph music, and detested phonograph monoluges, begged him to take the machine at home, but he assured her that she would be dull without it on winter evenings. He wanted one of the latest make, put out under the name of a great American inventor.
Some of the ranches near Wested's were owned by New York men who brought their families out there in the summer. Ralph had heard about the dances they gave, and he was counting on being one of the guests. He asked Claude to give him his dress suit, since Claude wouldn't be needing it any more.
"You can have it if you want it," said Claude indifferently. "But it won't fit you."
"I'll take it in to Fritz and have the pants cut off a little, and the shoulders taken in," his brother replied lightly.
Claude was impassive. "Go ahead. But if that old
"I think I'll let him try. Father won't say anything about what I've ordered for the house, but he isn't much for glad rags, you know." Without more ado he threw Claude's black clothes into the back seat of the Ford and ran into town to enlist the services of the German tailor.
Mr. Wheeler, when he returned, thought Ralph had been rather free in expenditures, but Ralph told him it wouldn't do to take over the new place too modestly. "The ranchers out there are all high-fliers. If we go to squeezing nickels, they won't thnk we mean business."
The country neighbours, who were always amused at the Wheelers' doings, got almost as much pleasure out of Ralph's lavishness as he did himself. One said Ralph had shipped a new piano out to Yucca county, another heard he had ordered a billiard table. August Yoeder, their prosperous German neighbour, asked grimly whether he could, maybe, get a place as a hired man with Ralph. Leonard Dawson, who was to be married in October, hailed Claude in town one day and shouted;
"My God, Claude, there's nothing left in the furniture store for me and Susie! Ralph's bought everything but the coffins. He must be going to live like a prince out there."
"I don't know anything about it," Claude answered coolly. "It's not my enterprise."
"No, you've got to stay on the old place and make it pay the debts, I understand." Leonard jumped into his car, so that Claude wouldn't have a chance to reply.
Mrs. Wheeler, too, when she observed the magnitude of these preparations, began to feel that the new arrangement was not fair to Claude, since he was the older boy and much the steadier. Claude had always worked hard when he was at
"Why, Claude," she said dreamily one day, "if your father were an older man, I would almost think his judgment had begun to fail. Won't we get dreadfully into debt at this rate?"
"Don't say anything, Mother. It's Father's money. He shan't think I want any of it."
"I wish I could talk to Bayliss. Has he said anything?"
"Not to me, he hasn't."
Ralph and Mr. Wheeler took another flying trip to
The only possessions Mahailey brought with her when she came to live with the Wheelers, were a feather bed and three patchwork quilts, interlined with wool off the backs of
She slept on her feather bed in winter, and in summer she
One day, while things were being packed for the western ranch, Mrs. Wheeler, going to the foot of the ladder to call Mahailey, narrowly escaped being knocked down by a large feather bed which came plumping through the trap door. A moment later Mahailey herself descended backwards,
"Why, Mahailey," gasped Mrs. Wheeler. "It's not winter yet; whatever are you getting your bed for?"
"I'm just a-goin' to lay on my fedder bed," she broke out, "or direc'ly I won't have none. I ain't a-goin' to have Mr. Ralph carryin' off my quilts my mudder pieced fur me."
Mrs. Wheeler tried to reason with her, but the old woman took up her bed in her arms and staggered down the hall with it, muttering and tossing her head like a horse in fly-time.
That afternoon Ralph brought a barrel and a bundle of straw into the kitchen and told Mahailey to carry up preserves and canned fruit, and he would pack them. She went obediently to the cellar, and Ralph took off his coat and began to line the barrel with straw. He was some time in doing this, but still Mahailey had not returned. He went to the head of the stairs and whistled.
"I'm a-comin', Mr. Ralph, I'm a-comin'! Don't hurry me, I don't want to break nothin'."
Ralph waited a few minutes. "What are you doing down
"I'm a-comin'. You'd git yourself all dusty down here." She came breathlessly up the stairs, carrying a hamper basket full of jars, her hands and face streaked with black.
"Well, I should say it is dusty!" Ralph snorted. "You might clean your fruit closet once in awhile, you know, Mahailey. You ought to see how Mrs. Dawson keeps hers. Now, let's see." He sorted the jars on the table. "Take back the grape jelly. If there's anything I hate, it's grape jelly. I know you have lots of it, but you can't work it off on me. And when you come up, don't forget the pickled peaches. I told you particularly, the pickled peaches!"
"We ain't got no pickled peaches." Mahailey stood by the cellar door, holding a corner of her apron up to her chin, with a queer, animal look of stubbornness in her face.
"No pickled peaches? What nonsense, Mahailey! I saw you making them here, only a few weeks ago."
"I know you did, Mr. Ralph, but they ain't none now. I didn't have no luck with my peaches this year. I must 'a' let the air git at 'em. They all worked on me, an' I had to throw 'em out."
Ralph was thoroughly annoyed. "I never heard such a thing, Mahailey! You get more careless every year. Think of wasting all that fruit and sugar! Does mother know?"
Mahailey's low brow clouded. "I reckon she does. I don't wase your mudder's sugar. I never did wase nothin'," she muttered. Her speech became queerer than ever when she was angry.
Ralph dashed down the cellar stairs, lit a lantern, and seached the fruit closet. Sure enough, there were no pickled
"Go on with your work," Ralph snapped. "Don't stand there watching me!"
That evening Claude was sitting on the windmill platform, down by the barn, after a hard day's work ploughing for winter wheat. He was solacing himself with his pipe. No matter how much she loved him, or how sorry she felt for him, his mother could never bring herself to tell him he might smoke in the house. Lights were shining from the upstairs rooms on the hill, and through the open windows sounded the singing snarl of a phonograph. A figure came stealing down the path. He knew by her low, padding step that it was Mahailey, with her apron thrown over her head. She came up to him and touched him on the shoulder in a way which meant that what she had to say was confidential.
"Mr. Claude, Mr. Ralph's done packed up a barr'l of your mudder's jell an' pickles to take out there."
"That's all right, Mahailey. Mr Wested was a widower, and I guess there wasn't anything of that sort put up at his place."
She hesitated and bent lower. "He asked me fur them pickled peaches I made fur you, but I didn't give him none. I hid 'em all in my old cook-stove we done put down cellar when Mr. Ralph bought the new one. I didn't give him your mudder's new preserves, nudder. I give him the old last year's stuff we had left over, and now you an' your mudder'll have plenty."
Claude laughed. "Oh, I don't care if Ralph takes all the fruit on the place, Mahailey!"
She shrank back a little, saying confusedly, "No, I know you don't, Mr. Claude. I know you don't."
"I surely ought not to take it out on her," Claude thought, when he saw her disappointment. He rose and patted her on the back. "That's all right, Mahailey. Thank you for saving the peaches, anyhow."
She shook her finger at him. "Don't you let on!"
He promised, and watched her slipping back over the zig-zag path up the hill.
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
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,
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
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
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,
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
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
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 sould 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
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 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 game 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
During this discussion, Mrs. Erlich drew Claude aside and
After the French
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 evening 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
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 good-bye indeed, and not, as Mrs. Erlich had fondly said,
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
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
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
"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
RALPH and his father came home to spend the
Though Bayliss had a sentimental feeling about coming home, he considered that he had had a lonely boyhood. At the country school he had not been happy; he was the boy who always got the answers to the test problems when the others didn't, and he kept his arithmetic papers buttoned up in
It was because Bayliss was quick at figures and undersized for a farmer that his father sent him to town to learn the
In Bayliss' voice, even when be used his insinuating drawl and said disagreeable things, there was something a little plaintive; the expression of a deep-seated sense of injury. He felt that he had always been misunderstood and
Bayliss and his father were talking together before dinner when Claude came in and was so inconsiderate as to put up a
"I see your friends, the Erlichs, have bought out the
Claude had promised his mother to keep his temper today. "Yes, I saw it in the paper. I hope they'll succeed."
"I doubt it." Bayliss shook his head with his wisest look. "I understand they've put a mortgage on their home. That old woman will find herself without a roof one of these days."
"I don't think so. The boys have wanted to go into
Bayliss screwed up his eyes. "I expect they're too fond of good living. They'll pay their interest, and spend
"Julius is going abroad to study this fall. He intends to be a professor."
"What's the matter with him? Does he have poor health?"
At this moment the dinner bell sounded, Ralph ran down from his room where he had been dressing, and they all
Mrs. Wheeler looked at him over the coffee-pot with a droll, guilty smile. "I don't believe coffee hurts me a particle,
"Of course it does; it's a stimulant." What worse could it be, his tone implied! When you said anything was a "
Claude was in the upper hall, putting on his coat to go down to the barn and smoke a cigar, when Bayliss came out from the sitting-room and detained him by an indefinite remark.
"I believe there's to be a musical show in Hastings Saturday night."
Claude said he had heard something of the sort.
"I was thinking," Bayliss affected a careless tone, as if he thought of such things every day, "that we might make a party and take Gladys and Enid. The roads are pretty good."
"It's a hard drive home, so late at night," Claude objected. Bayliss meant, of course, that Claude should drive the party up and back in Mr. Wheeler's big car. Bayliss never used his glistening Cadillac for long, rough drives.
"I guess Mother would put us up overnight, and we needn't take the girls home till Sunday morning. I'll get the tickets."
"You'd better arrange it with the girls, then. I'll drive you, of course, if you want to go."
Claude escaped and went out, wishing that Bayliss would do his own courting and not drag him into it. Bayliss, who didn't know one tune from another, certainly didn't want to go to this concert, and it was doubtful whether Enid Royce would care much about going. Gladys Farmer was the best musician in Frankfort, and she would probably like to hear it.
Claude and Gladys were old friends, from their High School
IT had been Mr. Wheeler's intention to stay at home until spring, but Ralph wrote that be was having trouble with his foreman, so his father went out to the ranch in
The snow began to fall about noon on St. Valentine's day, a soft, thick, wet snow that came down in billows and stuck to everything. Later in the afternoon the wind rose, and
Claude and Dan, down in the corral, where they were
"Ain't it a turrible storm, Mr. Claude? I reckon poor Mr. Ernest won't git over tonight, will he? You never mind,
Mrs. Wheeler met Claude at the head of the stairs. "There's no danger of the steers getting snowed under along the creek, is there?" she asked anxiously.
"No, I thought of that. We've driven them all into the little corral on the level, and shut the gates. It's over my head down in the creek bottom now. I haven't a dry stitch on me., I guess I'll follow Mahailey's advice and get in the tub, if you can wait supper for me."
"Put your clothes outside the bathroom door, and I'll see to drying them for you."
"Yes, please. I'll need them tomorrow. I don't want to spoil my new corduroys. And, Mother, see if you can make Dan change. He's too wet and steamy to sit at the table with. Tell him if anybody has to go out after supper, I 'll go."
Mrs. Wheeler hurried down stairs. Dan, she knew, would rather sit all evening in wet clothes than take the trouble to put on dry ones. He tried to sneak past her to his own quarters behind the wash-room, and looked aggrieved when he heard her message.
"I ain't got no other outside clothes, except my Sunday ones," he objected.
"Well, Claude says he'll go out if anybody has to. I guess you'll have to change for once, Dan, or go to bed without your supper." She laughed quietly at his dejected expression as he slunk away.
"Mrs. Wheeler," Mahailey whispered, "can't I run down to the cellar an' git some of them nice strawberry preserves?
"Very well. I'll make the coffee good and strong; that will please him more than anything."
Claude came down feeling clean and warm and hungry. As he opened the stair door he sniffed the coffee and frying ham, and when Mahailey bent over the oven the warm smell of browning biscuit rushed out with the beat. These combined odours somewhat dispersed Dan's gloom when he came back in squeaky Sunday shoes and a bunglesome cut- away coat. The latter was not required of him, but he wore it for revenge.
During supper Mrs. Wheeler told them once again how, long ago when she was first married, there were no roads or fences west of Frankfort. One winter night she sat on the roof of their first dugout nearly all night, holding up a lantern tied to a pole to guide Mr. Wheeler home through a snowstorm like this.
Mahailey, moving about the stove, watched over the group at the table.
She liked to see the men fill themselves with food— though she did not
count Dan a man, by any means,— and she looked out to see that Mrs.
Wheeler did not forget to eat altogether, as she was apt to do when she
fell to
After supper Claude lay on the couch in the sitting-room, while his
mother read aloud to him from "Bleak House,"—one of the few novels
she loved. Poor Jo was drawing toward
He rose and went to look out, but the west windows were so plastered
with snow that they were opaque. Even from the one on the south he
could see nothing for a moment; then Mahailey must have carried her
lamp to the kitchen window beneath, for all at once a broad yellow beam
shone out into the choked air, and down it millions of snowflakes hurried
like armies, an unceasing progression, moving as close .as they could
without forming a solid mass. Claude struck the frozen window-frame
with his fist, lifted the lower sash, and thrusting out his head tried to
look abroad into the
CLAUDE'S bedroom faced the east. The next
At the kitchen stairs Mahailey met him in gleeful
The storm door opened outward. Claude put his shoulder to it and pushed it a little way. Then, with Mahailey's fire-shovel he dislodged enough snow to enable him to force back the door. Dan came tramping in his stocking-feet across the kitchen to his boots, which were still drying behind the stove. "She's sure a bad one, Claude," he remarked, blinking.
"Yes. I guess we won't try to go out till after breakfast. We'll have to dig our way to the barn, and I never thought to bring the shovels up last night."
"Th' ole snow shovels is in the cellar. I'll git 'em."
"Not now, Mahailey. Give us our breakfast before you do anything else."
Mrs. Wheeler came down, pinning on her little shawl, her
shoulders more bent than usual. "Claude," she said
He laughed. "No, Mother. The cattle have been moving around all night, I expect."
When the two men started out with the wooden snow shovels, Mrs. Wheeler and Mahailey stood in the doorway, watching them. For a short distance from the house the path they dug was like a tunnel, and the white walls on either side were higher than their beads. On the breast of the hill the snow was not so deep, and they made better headway. They bad to fight through a second heavy drift before they reached the barn, where they went in and warmed themselves among the horses and cows. Dan was for getting next a warm cow and beginning to milk.
"Not yet," said Claude. "I want to have a look at the hogs before we do anything here."
The hog-house was built down in a draw behind the barn. When Claude reached the edge of the gully, blown almost bare, he could look about him. The draw was full of snow, smooth . . .. except in the middle, where there was a rumpled depression, resembling a great heap of tumbled bed- linen.
Dan gasped. "God a' mighty, Claude, the roof's fell in! Them hogs'll be smothered."
"They will if we don't get at them pretty quick. Run to the house and tell Mother Mahailey will have to milk this morning, and get back here as fast as you can."
The roof was a flat thatch, and the weight of the snow had been too much for it. Claude wondered if he should have put on a new thatch that fall; but the old one wasn't leaky, and had seemed strong enough.
When Dan got back they took turns, one going ahead and throwing out as much snow as he could, the other handling the snow that fell back. After an hour or so of this work, Dan leaned on his shovel.
"We'll never do it, Claude. Two men couldn't throw all that snow out in a week. I'm about all in."
"Well, you can go back to the house and sit by the fire," Claude called fiercely. He had taken off his coat and was working in his shirt and sweater. The sweat was rolling from his face, his back and arms ached, and his hands, which lie couldn't keep dry, were blistered. There were thirty-seven hogs in the hog-house.
Dan sat down in the hole. "Maybe if I could git a drink of water, I could hold on a-ways," he said dejectedly.
It was past noon when they got into the shed; a cloud of steam rose, and they heard grunts. They found the pigs all lying in a heap at one end, and pulled the top ones off alive and squealing. Twelve hogs, at the bottom of the pile, had been suffocated. They lay there wet and black in the snow,their bodies warm and smoking, but they were dead; there was no mistaking that.
Mrs. Wheeler, in her husband's rubber boots and an old overcoat, came down with Mahailey to view the scene of disaster.
"You ought to git right at them hawgs an' butcher 'em today," Mahailey called down to the men. She was standing on the edge of the draw, in her patched jacket and ravelled hood.
Claude, down in the hole, brushed the sleeve of his sweater across his streaming face. "Butcher them?" he cried indig-nantly. "I wouldn't butcher them if I never saw meat again."
"You ain't a-goin' to let all that good hawg-meat go to wase, are you, Mr. Claude?" Mahailey pleaded. "They didn't have no sickness nor nuthin'. Only you'll have to git right at 'em, or the meat won't be healthy-"
"It wouldn't be healthy for me, anyhow. I don't know what I will do with them, but I'm mighty sure I won't butcher them."
"Don't bother him, Mahailey," Mrs. Wheeler cautioned her. "He's tired, and he has to fix some place for the live hogs."
"I know he is, mam, but I could easy cut up one of them hawgs myself. I butchered my own little pig onct, in Virginia. I could save the hams, anyways, and the spare-ribs. We ain't had no spare-ribs for ever so long."
What with the ache in his back and his chagrin at losing the pigs, Claude was feeling desperate. "Mother," he shouted, "if you don't take Mahailey into the house, I'll go crazy!"
That evening Mrs. Wheeler asked him how much the twelve hogs would have been worth in money. He looked a little startled.
"Oh, I don't know exactly; three hundred dollars, anyway."
"Would it really be as much as that? I don't see how we could have prevented it, do you?" Her face looked troubled.
Claude went to bed immediately after supper, but he had no sooner
stretched his aching body between the sheets than he began to feel
wakeful. He was humiliated at losing the pigs, because they had been left
in his charge; but for the loss in money, about which even his, mother was
grieved, he didn't seem to care. He wondered whether all that winter he
hadn't
When Ralph was home at Christmas time, he wore on his little finger a heavy gold ring, with a diamond as big as a pea, surrounded by showy grooves in the metal. He admitted to Claude that he had won it in a poker, game. Ralph's hands were never free from automobile grease—they were the red, stumpy kind that couldn't be kept clean. Claude remembered him milking in the barn by lantern light, his jewel throwing off jabbing sparkles of colour, and his fingers looking very much like the teats of the cow. That picture rose before him row, as a symbol of what successful farming led to.
The farmer raised and took to market things with an
Claude felt sure that when he was a little boy and all the neighbours were
poor, they and their houses and farms had more individuality. The farmers
took time then to plant fine cottonwood groves on their places, and to set
osage orange hedges along the borders of their fields. Now these trees
were all being cut down and grubbed up. Just why, nobody knew; they
impoverished the land . . . they made the snow drift . . .nobody had them
any more. With prosperity came a kind of callousness; everybody wanted
to destroy the old things they
The people themselves had changed. He could remember when all the farmers in this community were friendly toward each other; now they were continually having lawsuits. Their sons were either stingy and grasping, or extravagant and lazy, and they were always stirring up trouble. Evidently, it took more intelligence to spend money than to make it.
When he pondered upon this conclusion, Claude thought of the Erlichs. Julius could go abroad and study for his doctor's degree, and live on less than Ralph wasted every year. Ralph would never have a profession or a trade, would never do or make anything the world needed.
Nor did Claude find his own outlook much better. He was twenty-one years old, and he had no skill, no training,—no ability that would ever take him among the kind of people he admired. He was a clumsy, awkward farmer boy, and even Mrs. Erlich seemed to think the farm the best place for him. Probably it was; but all the same he didn't find this kind of life worth the trouble of getting up every morning. He could not see the use of working for money, when money brought nothing one wanted. Mrs. Erlich said it brought security.. Sometimes he thought this security was what was the matter with everybody; that only perfect safety was required to kill all the best qualities in people and develop the mean ones.
Ernest, too, said "it's the best life in the world, Claude." But if you went to
bed defeated every night, and dreaded to wake in the morning, then
clearly it was too good a life for you. To be assured, at his age, of three
meals a day and
Claude knew, and everybody else knew, seemingly, that there was
something wrong with him. He had been unable to conceal his discontent.
Mr. Wheeler was afraid he was one of those visionary fellows who make
unnecessary
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 heterogenous 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 mill- house, 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 I 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, be himself is bigger; that under the whole crystalline blue
sky there is no one quite so warm and sentient as himself, and
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 it. 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 electric coupe in cold weather.
"Now, which way?" Claude asked as the horses sprang
"Almost any way. What a beautiful night! And I love
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
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
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
"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
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
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
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
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
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
"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
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
"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
"Take me with you, Claude!" said Gladys in a tone of
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
He was so angry with Gladys that he hadn't been able to bid her good-
night. Everything she said on the ride bad
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
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 bad 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
0NE afternoon that spring Claude was sitting on the long flight of granite
steps that leads up to the State House in Denver. He had been looking at the
Claude had been away from home for nearly a month. His father had sent him
out to see Ralph and the new ranch, and from there he went on to Colorado
Springs and Trinidad. He had enjoyed travelling, but now that he was back in Denver he had that
feeling of loneliness which often overtakes country boys in a city; the feeling
of being unrelated to anything, of not mattering to anybody. He had wandered
about Colorado Springs wishing he knew some of the people who were going
in and out of the houses; wishing that he could talk to some of those pretty
girls he saw driving their own cars about the streets, if only to say a few
words. One morning when he was walking out in the hills a girl passed him,
then slowed her car to ask if she could give him a lift. Claude would have said
that she was just the sort who would never stop to pick him up,—
He wondered this afternoon how many discouraged young men had sat
here on the State House steps and watched the sun go down behind the
mountains. Every one was always saying it was a fine thing to be
young; but it was a painful thing, too. He didn't believe older people
were ever so wretched. Over there, in the golden light, the mass of
mountains was splitting up into four distinct ranges, and as the sun
dropped lower the peaks emerged in perspective, one behind the other. It
was a lonely splendour that only made the ache in his breast the
stronger. What
The statue of Kit Carson on horseback, down in the Square, pointed westward; but there was no West, in that sense, any more. There was still South America; perhaps he could find something below the Isthmus. Here the sky was like a lid shut down over the world; his mother could see saints and martyrs behind it.
Well, in time he would get over all this, he supposed. Even his father had
been restless as a young man, and had run away into a new country. It
was a storm that died down at last,—but what a pity not to do anything
with it! A waste of power—for it was a kind of power; he sprang to his
feet and stood frowning against the ruddy light, so deep in his own
struggling thoughts that he did not notice a man, mounting
The stranger scrutinized Claude with interest. He saw a young man standing bareheaded on the long flight of steps, his fists clenched in an attitude of arrested action,—his sandy hair, his tanned face, his tense figure copper-coloured in the oblique rays. Claude would have been astonished if he could have known how he seemed to this stranger.
The next morning Claude stepped off the train at Frankfort and had his
breakfast at the station before the town was awake. His family were not
He left town by the low road that wound along the creek. The willows were all out in new yellow leaves, and the sticky cotton-wood buds were on the point of bursting. Birds were calling everywhere, and now and then, through the studded willow wands, flashed the dazzling wing of a cardinal.
All over the dusty, tan-coloured wheatfields there was a tender mist of green,—millions of little fingers reaching up and waving lightly in the sun. To the north and south Claude could see the corn-planters, moving in straight lines over the brown acres where the earth had been harrowed so fine that it blew off in clouds of dust to the roadside. When a gust of wind rose, gay little twisters came across the open fields, corkscrews of powdered earth that whirled through the air and suddenly fell again. It seemed as if there were a lark on every fence post, singing for everything that was dumb; for the great ploughed lands, and the heavy horses in the rows, and the men guiding the horses.
Along the roadsides, from under the dead weeds and wisps of dried
bluestem, the dandelions thrust up their clean, bright faces. If Claude
happened to step on one, the acrid smell
Claude was thinking, as he walked, of how he used to like to come to mill with his father. The whole process of milling was mysterious to him, then; and the mill house and the miller's wife were mysterious; even Enid was, a little,—until he got her down in the bright sun among the cat-tails. They used to play in the bins of clean wheat, watch the flour coming out of the hopper and get themselves covered with white dust.
Best of all lie liked going in where the water-wheel hung dripping in its dark
cave, and quivering streaks of sunlight 6 came in through the cracks to
play on the green slime and the spotted jewel-weed growing in the shade.
The mill was a place of sharp contrasts; bright sun and deep shade, roaring
sound and heavy, dripping silence. He remembered how
Jason Royce must have kept his mill going out of sentiment, for there was
not much money in it now. But milling had been his first business, and he
had not found many things in life to be sentimental about. Sometimes one
still came upon
Mr. Royce's family affairs had never gone as well as his business. He
had not been blessed with a son, and out of five daughters he had
succeeded in bringing up only two. People thought the mill house damp
and unwholesome. Until he built a tenant's cottage and got a married
man to take charge of the mill, Mr. Royce was never able to keep his
A deep preoccupation about her health made Mrs. Royce like a woman
who has a hidden grief, or is preyed upon by a consuming regret. It
wrapped her in a kind of insensibility. She lived differently from other
people, and that fact made her distrustful and reserved. Only when she
was at the sanatorium, under the care of her idolized doctors, did she feel
that she was understood and surrounded by sympathy.
Besides, in Frankfort, Enid was thought very pretty,—in itself a
humanizing attribute. She was slender, with a small; well-shaped head, a
smooth, pale skin, and large, dark, opaque eyes with heavy lashes. The
long line from the lobe of her car to the tip of her chin gave her face a
certain rigidity, but to the old ladies, who are the best' critics in such
matters, this meant firmness and dignity. She moved quickly and
gracefully, just brushing things rather than touching them, so that there
was a suggestion of flight about her slim figure, of gliding away from her
surroundings. When the Sunday School gave
On this May morning when Claude Wheeler came striding up the mill
road, Enid was in the yard, standing by a trellis for vines built near the
fence, out from under the heavy shade of the trees. She was raking the
earth that had been spaded
"Hello, are you farming?" he called as he came up to the fence.
Enid, who was bending over at that moment, rose quickly, but without a start. "Why, Claude! I thought you were out West, somewhere. This is a surprise!" She brushed the earth from her hands and gave him her limp white fingers. Her arms, bare below the elbow, were thin, and looked cold, as if she had put on a summer dress too early.
"I just got back this morning. I'm walking out home. What are you planting?"
"Sweet peas."
"You always have the finest ones in the country. When I see a bunch of yours at church or anywhere, I always know them."
"Yes, I'm quite successful with my sweet peas," she admitted. "The ground is rich down here, and they get plenty of sun."
"It isn't only your sweet peas. Nobody else has such lilacs or rambler roses, and I expect you have the only wistaria vine in Frankfort county."
"Mother planted that a long while ago, when she first moved here. She is very partial to wistaria. I'm afraid we'll lose it, one of these hard winters."
"Oh, that would be a shame! Take good care of it. You must put in a lot of time looking after these things, anyway." He spoke admiringly.
Enid leaned against the fence and pushed back her little
He coloured. "I? Good gracious, I don't have many! I'm an awfully discontented sort of fellow. I didn't care about going to school until I had to stop, and then I was sore because I couldn't go back. I guess, I've been sulking about it all winter."
She looked at him with quiet astonishment. "I don't see why you should be discontented; you're so free."
"Well, aren't you free, too?"
"Not to do what I want to. The only thing I really want to do is to go out to China and help Carrie in her work. Mother thinks I'm not strong enough. But Carrie was never very strong here. She is better in China, and I think, I might be."
Claude felt concern. He had not seen Enid since the sleigh-ride, when she had been gayer than usual. Now she seemed sunk in lassitude. "You must get over such notions, Enid. You don't want to go wandering off alone like that. It makes people queer. Isn't there plenty of missionary work to be done right here?"
She sighed. "That's what everybody says. But we all of us have a chance, if we'll take it. Out there they haven't. It's terrible to think of all those millions that live and die in darkness."
Claude glanced up at the sombre mill house, hidden in cedars,—then off at
the bright, dusty fields. He felt as if he were a little to blame for Enid's
melancholy. He hadn't been very neighbourly this last year. "People, can
live in darkness here, too, unless they fight it. Look at me. I told you I've
"Then I will. I've always been fond of your mother." She paused a moment, absently twisting the strings of her bonnet, then twitched it from her head with a quick movement and looked at him squarely in the bright light. "Claude, you haven't really become a free-thinker, have you?"
He laughed outright. "Why, what made you think I had?"
"Everybody knows Ernest Havel is, and people say you and he read that kind of books together."
"Has that got anything to do with our being friends?"
Yes, it has. I couldn't feel the same confidence in you. I've worried about it a good deal."
"Well, you just cut it out. For one thing, I'm not worth it," he said quickly.
"Oh, yes, you are! If worrying would do any good—" she shook her head at him reproachfully.
Claude took hold of the fence pickets between them with both hands. "It will do good! Didn't I tell you there was missionary work to be done right here? Is that why you've been so stand-offish with me the last few years, because you thought I was an atheist?"
"I never, you know, liked Ernest Havel," she murmured.
When Claude left the mill and started homeward he felt that he had found
something hich would help him through the summer. How fortunate he
had been to come upon Enid alone and talk to her without interruption,—
without once
Yes, he must see to it that Enid went about and saw more of other people. She was too much with her mother, and with her own thoughts. Flowers and foreign missions—her garden and the great kingdom of China; there was something unusual and touching about her preoccupations. Something quite charming, too. Women ought to be religious; faith was the natural fragrance of their minds. The more incredible the things they believed, the more lovely was the act of belief. To him the story of "Paradise Lost" was as mythical as the "Odyssey"; yet when his mother read it aloud to him, it was not only beautiful but true. A woman who didn't have holy thoughts about mysterious things far away would be prosaic and commonplace, like a man.
DURING the next few weeks Claude often ran his car down to the mill house on a pleasant evening and coaxed Enid to go into Frankfort with him and sit through a moving picture show, or to drive to a neighbouring town. The advantage of this form of companionship was that it did not put too great a strain upon one's conversational powers. Enid could be admirably silent, and she was never embarrassed by either silence or speech. She was cool and sure of herself under any circumstances, and that was one reason why she drove a car so well,— much better than Claude, indeed.
One Sunday, when they met after church, she told Claude that she wanted to go to Hastings to do some shopping, and they arranged that he should take her on Tuesday in his father's big car. The town was about seventy miles to the northeast and, from Frankfort, it was an inconvenient trip by rail.
On Tuesday morning Claude reached the mill house just as the sun was rising over the damp fields. Enid was on the front porch waiting for him, wearing a blanket coat over her spring suit. She ran down to the gate and slipped into the seat beside him.
"Good morning, Claude. Nobody else is up. It's going to be a glorious day, isn't it?"
"Splendid. A little warm for this time of year. You won't need that coat long,"
For the first hour they found the roads empty. All the
While Enid was shopping, Claude bought some white shoes and duck trousers. He felt more interest than usual in his summer clothes. They met at the hotel for lunch, both very hungry and both satisfied with their morning's work. Seated in the dining room, with Enid opposite him, Claude thought they did not look at all like a country boy and girl come to town, but like experienced people touring in their car.
"Will you make a call with me after dinner?" she asked while they were waiting for their dessert.
"Is it any one I know?"
"Certainly. Brother Weldon is in town. His meetings are over, and I was afraid he might be gone, but he is staying on a few days with Mrs. Gleason. I brought some of Carrie's letters along for him to read."
Claude made a wry face. "He won't be delighted to see me. We never got on well at school. He's a regular muff of a teacher, if you want to know," he added resolutely.
Enid studied him judicially. "I'm surprised to hear that; he's such a good speaker. You'd better come along. It's so foolish to have a coolness with your old teachers."
An hour later the Reverend Arthur Weldon received the two young
people in Mrs. Gleason's half-darkened parlour,
He directed most of his remarks to Enid and, as always, avoided looking at Claude except when he definitely addressed him.
"You are farming this year, Claude? I presume that is a great satisfaction to your father. And Mrs. Wheeler is quite well?"
Mr. Weldon certainly bore no malice, but he always
"You see, Brother Weldon," she said earnestly, "I am not naturally much drawn to people. I find it hard to take the proper interest in the church work at home. It seems as if I had always been holding myself in reserve for the foreign field,—by not making personal ties, I mean. If Gladys Farmer went to China, everybody would miss her. She could never be replaced in the High School. She has the kind of magnetism that draws people to her. But I have always been keeping myself free to do what Carrie is doing. There I know I could be of use."
Claude saw it was not easy for Enid to talk like this. Her face looked troubled, and her dark eyebrows came together in a sharp angle as she tried to tell the young preacher exactly what was going on in her mind. He listened with his habitual, smiling attention, smoothing the paper of the folded letter pages and murmuring, "Yes, I understand. Indeed, Miss Enid ?"
When she pressed him for advice, he said it was not always
easy to know in what field one could be most useful; perhaps this very
restraint was giving her some spiritual discipline that she particularly
needed. He was careful not to commit
"I believe that all things are made clear to us in prayer, Miss Enid."
Enid clasped her hands; her perplexity made her features look sharper.
"But it is when I pray that I feel this call the strongest. It seems as if a
finger were pointing me over there. Sometimes when I ask for guidance in
little things, I get none,
Mr. Weldon answered her in a tone of relief, as if 'And behold a way
shall be opened up before thy feet; walk thou in it.' "We might say that
this promise was originally meant for Enid Royce! I believe God likes us to
appropriate passages of His word personally." This last remark was made
playfully, as if it were a kind of Christian Endeavour jest. He rose and
handed Enid back the letters. Clearly, the
As Enid drew on her gloves she told him that it had been a great help to talk to him, and that he always seemed to give her what she needed. Claude wondered what it was. He hadn't seen Weldon do anything but retreat before her eager questions. He, an "atheist," could have given her stronger reinforcement.
Claude's car stood under the maple trees in front of Mrs. Gleason's house. Before they got into it, he called Enid's attention to a mass of thunderheads in the west.
"That looks to me like a storm. It might be a wise thing to stay at the hotel tonight."
"Oh, no! I don't want to do that. I haven't come
He reminded her that it wouldn't be impossible to buy
"I don't like to stay in a strange place without things," she said decidedly.
"I'm afraid we'll be going straight into it. We may be in for something pretty rough,—but it's as you say!' He still hesitated, with his band on the door.
"I think we'd better try it," she said with quiet
For an hour be drove at his best speed, watching the clouds anxiously. The table-land, from horizon to horizon, was glowing in sunlight, and the sky itself seemed only the more brilliant for the mass of purple vapours rolling in the west, with bright edges, like new-cut lead. He had made fifty odd miles when the air suddenly grew cold, and in ten minutes the whole shining sky was blotted out. He sprang to the ground and began to jack up his wheels. As soon as a wheel left the earth, Enid adjusted the chain. Claude told her he had never got the chains on so quickly before. He covered the packages in the back seat with an oilcloth and drove forward to meet the storm.
The rain swept over them in waves, seemed to rise from the sod as well as to fall from the clouds. They made another five miles, ploughing through puddles and sliding over liquefied roads. Suddenly the heavy car, chains and all, bounded up a two-foot bank, shot over the sod a dozen yards before the brake caught it, then swung a half-circle and stood still. Enid sat calm and motionless.
Claude drew a long breath. "If that had happened on a culvert, we'd be in
the ditch with the car on top of us. I simply can't control the thing. The
whole top soil is loose, and
"But that would be worse than the hotel," Enid objected. "They are not
very clean people, and there are a lot of
"Better be crowded than dead," he murmured. "From here on, it would be a matter of luck. We might land anywhere."
"We are only about ten miles from your place. I can stay with your mother tonight."
"It's too dangerous, Enid. I don't like the responsibility. Your father would blame me for taking such a chance."
"I know, it's on my account you're nervous." Enid spoke reasonably enough. "Do you mind letting me drive for awhile? There are only three bad hills left, and I think I can slide down them sideways; I've often tried it."
Claude got out and let her slip into his seat, but after she took the wheel
he put his hand on her arm. "Don't do
Enid smiled and shook her head. She was amiable, but inflexible.
He folded his arms. "Go on."
He was chafed by her stubbornness, but he had to admire her resourcefulness in handling the car. At the bottom of one of the worst hills was a new cement culvert, overlaid with liquid mud, where there was nothing for the chains to grip. The car slid to the edge of the culvert and, stopped on the very brink. While they were ploughing up the other side of the hill, Enid remarked; "It's a good thing your starter works well; a little jar would have thrown us over."
They pulled up at the Wheeler farm just before dark, and
"You poor drowned children!" she cried, taking Enid in her arms. "How did you ever get home? I so hoped you had stayed in Hastings."
"It was Enid who got us home," Claude told her. "She's a dreadfully foolhardy girl, and somebody ought to shake her, but she's a fine driver."
Enid laughed as she brushed a wet lock back from her forehead. "You were right, of course; the sensible thing would have been to turn in at the Rice place; only I didn't want to."
Later in the evening Claude was glad they hadn't. It was pleasant to be at home and to see Enid at the supper table, sitting on his father's right and wearing one of his mother's new grey house-dresses. They would have had a dismal time at the Rices', with no beds to sleep in except such as were already occupied by Rice children. Enid had never slept in his mother's guest room before, and it pleased him to think how comfortable she would be there.
At an early hour Mrs. Wheeler took a candle to light her guest to bed;
Enid passed near Claude's chair as she was leaving the room. "Have you
forgiven me?" she asked
"What made you so pig-headed? Did you want to frighten me? or to show me how well you could drive?"
"Neither. I wanted to get home. Good-night."
Claude settled back in, his chair and shaded his eyes. She
did feel that this was home, then. She had not been afraid of his father's
jokes, or disconcerted by Mahailey's knowing grin. Her ease in the
household gave him unaccountable pleasure.
"Move quietly when you go upstairs, Claude. She is so tired that she may be asleep already." He took off his shoes and made his ascent with the utmost caution.
ERNEST Havel was cultivating his bright, glistening young cornfield one summer morning, whistling to himself an old German song which was somehow connected with a picture that rose in his memory. It was a picture of the earliest ploughing he could remember.
He saw a half-circle of green hills, with snow still lingering in the clefts of the higher ridges; behind the hills rose a wall of sharp mountains, covered with dark pine forests. In the meadows at the foot of that sweep of hills there was a winding creek, with polled willows in their first yellow-green, and brown fields. He himself was a little boy, playing by the creek and watching his father and mother plough with two great oxen, that had rope traces fastened to their heads and their long horns. His mother walked barefoot beside the oxen and led them; his father walked behind, guiding the plough. His father always looked down. His mother's face was almost as brown and furrowed as the fields, and her eyes were pale blue, like the skies of early spring. The two would go up and down thus all morning without speaking, except to the oxen. Ernest was the last of a long family, and as he played by the creek be used to wonder why his parents looked so old.
Leonard Dawson drove his car up to the fence and shouted, waking Ernest from his revery. He told his team to stand, and ran out to the edge of the field.
"Hello, Ernest," Leonard called. "Have you heard Claude Wheeler got hurt day before yesterday?"
"You don't say so! It can't be anything bad, or they'd let me know."
"Oh, it's nothing very bad, I guess, but he got his face scratched up in the wire quite a little. It was the queerest thing I ever saw. He was out with the team of mules and a heavy plough, working the road in that deep cut between their place and mine. The gasoline motor-truck came along, making more noise than usual, maybe. But those mules know a motor truck, and what they did was pure cussedness. They begun to rear and plunge in that deep cut. I was working my corn over in the field and shouted to the gasoline man to stop, but be didn't hear me. Claude jumped for the critters' heads and got 'em by the bits, but by that time he was all tangled up in the lines. Those damned mules lifted him off his feet and started to run. Down the draw and up the bank and across the fields, they went, with that big plough-blade jumping three or four feet in the air every clip. I was sure it would cut one of the mules open, or go clean through Claude. It would have got him, too, if he hadn't kept his hold on the bits. They carried him right along, swinging in the air, and finally ran him into the barb-wire fence and cut his face and neck up."
"My goodness! Did be get cut bad?"
"No, not very, but yesterday morning he was out cultivating corn, all stuck up with court plaster. I knew that was a fool thing to do; a wire cut's nasty if you get overheated out in the dust. But you can't tell a Wheeler anything. Now they say his face has swelled and is hurting him terrible, and he's gone to town to see the doctor. You'd better go over there tonight, and see if you can make him take care of himself."
Leonard drove on, and Ernest went back to his team. "It's queer about that boy," he was thinking. "He's big and strong,
The next afternoon Enid Royce's coupe drove up to the Wheeler farmyard. Mrs. Wheeler saw Enid get out of her car and came down the hill to meet her, breathless and
Enid took her arm, and they started up the hill toward the house. "Can I see Claude, Mrs. Wheeler? I want to give him these flowers."
Mrs. Wheeler hesitated. "I don't know if he will let you come in, dear. I had hard work persuading him to see Ernest for a few moments last night. He seems so low-spirited, and he's sensitive about the way he's bandaged up. I'll go to his room and ask him."
"No, just let me go up with you, please. If I walk in with you, he won't have time to fret about it. I won't stay if he doesn't wish it, but I want to see him."
Mrs. Wheeler was alarmed at this suggestion, but Enid ignored her uncertainty. They went up to the third floor together, and Enid herself tapped at the door.
"It's I, Claude. May I come in for a moment?"
A muffled, reluctant voice answered. "No. They say this is catching, Enid. And anyhow, I'd rather you didn't see me like this."
Without waiting she pushed open the door. The dark blinds were down, and the room was full of a strong, bitter odour.
"Does the light hurt your eyes? Let me put up one of the blinds for a moment, because I want you to see these flowers. I've brought you my first sweet peas."
Claude blinked at the bunch of bright colours she held out before him. She put them up to his face and asked him if he could smell them through his medicines. In a moment he ceased to feel embarrassed. His mother brought a glass bowl, and Enid arranged the flowers on the little table beside him.
"Now, do you want me to darken the room again?"
"Not yet. Sit down for a minute and talk to me. I can't say much because my face is stiff."
"I should think it would be! I met Leonard Dawson on the road yesterday, and lie told me how you worked in the field after you were cut. I would like to scold you hard, Claude."
"Do. It might make me feel better." He took her hand and kept her beside him a moment. "Are those the sweet peas you were planting that day when I came back from the West?"
"Yes. Haven't they done well to blossom so early?"
"Less than two months. That's strange," he sighed.
"Strange? What?"
"Oh, that a handful of seeds can make anything so pretty in a few weeks, and it takes a man so long to do anything — and then it's not much account."
"That's not the way to look at things," she said reprovingly.
Enid sat prim and straight on a chair at the foot of his bed. Her flowered organdie dress was very much like the bouquet
"What is it, Enid? The medicine they give me makes me stupid. I don't catch things."
"I was asking whether you play chess."
"Very badly."
"Father says I play passably well. When you are better you must let me bring up my ivory chessmen that Carrie sent me from China. They are beautifully carved. And now it's time for me to go."
She rose and patted his hand, telling him he must not be foolish about seeing people. "I didn't know you were so vain. Bandages are as becoming to you as they are to anybody. Shall I pull the dark blind again for you?"
"Yes, please. There won't be anything to look at now."
"Why, Claude, you are getting to be quite a ladies' man!"
Something in the way Enid said this made him wince a little. He felt his burning face grow a shade warmer. Even after she went downstairs he kept wishing she had not said that.
His mother came to give him his medicine. She stood beside him while he swallowed it. "Enid Royce is a real sensible girl—" she said as she took the glass. Her upward inflection expressed not conviction but bewilderment.
Enid came every afternoon, and Claude looked forward to her visits restlessly; they were the only pleasant things that happened to him, and made him forget the humiliation of his poisoned and disfigured face. He was disgusting to himself; when he touched the welts on his forehead and under his hair, he felt unclean and abject. At night, when his fever ran high, and the pain began to tighten in his head and neck, it wrought him to a distressing pitch of excitement. He fought with it as one bulldog fights with another. His mind prowled about among dark legends of torture,— everything he had ever read about the Inquisition, the rack and the wheel.
When Enid entered his room, cool and fresh in her pretty summer clothes, his mind leaped to meet her. He could not talk much, but he lay looking at her and breathing in a sweet contentment. After awhile he was well enough to sit up half- dressed in a steamer chair and play chess with her.
One afternoon they were by the west window in the sitting room with the chess board between them, and Claude had to admit that he was beaten again.
"It must be dull for you, playing with me," he murmured, brushing the beads of sweat from his forehead. His face was clean now, so white that even his freckles had disappeared, and his hands were the soft, languid hands of a sick man.
"You will play better when you are stronger. and can fix your mind on it," Enid assured him. She was puzzled because Claude, who had a good head for some things, had none at all for chess, and it was clear that he would never play well.
"Yes," he sighed, dropping back into his chair, "my wits do wander. Look at my wheatfield, over there on the
Enid put the chessmen back into their box. "Now that you are better, you must stop feeling blue. Father says that with your trouble people are always depressed."
Claude shook his bead slowly, as it lay against the back of the chair. "No, it's not that. It's having so much time to think that makes me blue. You see, Enid, I've never yet done anything that gave me any satisfaction. I must be good for something. When I lie still and think, I wonder whether my life has been happening to me or to somebody else. It doesn't seem to have much connection with me. I haven't made much of a start."
"But you are not twenty-two yet. You have plenty of time to start. Is that what you are thinking about all the time!" She shook her finger at him.
"I think about two things all the time. That is one of them." Mrs. Wheeler came in with Claude's four o'clock milk; it was his first day downstairs.
When they were children, playing by the mill-dam, Claude had seen the future as a luminous vagueness in which he and Enid would always do things together. Then there came a time when he wanted to do everything with Ernest, when girls were disturbing and a bother, and he pushed all that into the distance, knowing that some day he must reckon with it again.
Now he told himself he had always known Enid would
come back; and she had come on that afternoon when she
entered his drug-smelling room and let in the sunlight. She
Old Mr. Smith was the minister in those days,—a good man who had been much tossed about by a stormy and
When they played together she was fair-minded, didn't whine if she got hurt, and never claimed a girl's exemption from
When Claude's strength began to return to him, it came overwhelmingly. His blood seemed to grow strong while his body was still weak, so that the in-rush of vitality shook him. The desire to live again sang in his veins
while his frame was unsteady. Waves of youth swept over him and left him exhausted. When Enid was with him these feelings were never so strong; her actual presence restored his equilibrium
During the first days of his recovery he did nothing but enjoy the creeping stir of life. Respiration was a soft
Sometimes when Enid sat unsuspecting beside him, a quick blush swept across his face and he felt guilty toward her,— meek and humble, as if he must beg her forgiveness for something. Often he was glad when she went
away and left him alone to think about her.' Her presence brought him sanity, and for that he ought to be grateful. When he was with her, he thought how she was to be the one who would put him right with the world and
make him fit into the life about him. He had troubled his mother and disappointed his father.
CLAUDE'S first trip to Frankfort was to get his hair cut. After leaving the barber-shop he presented
"Hello, Claude, glad to see you around again! Sickness can't do much to a husky young farmer like you. With old fellows, it's another story. I'm just starting off to have a look at my alfalfa, south of the river. Get in and go along with me."
They went out to the open car that stood by the sidewalk, and when they were spinning along between fields of ripening grain Claude broke the silence. "I expect you know what I want to see you about, Mr. Royce?"
The older man shook his head. He had been preoccupied and grim ever since they started.
"Well," Claude went on modestly, "it oughtn't to surprise you to hear that I've set my heart on Enid. I haven't said anything to her yet, but if you're not against me, I'm going to try to persuade her to marry me."
"Marriage is a final sort of thing, Claude," said Mr. Royce. He sat slumping in his seat, watching the road ahead of him with intense abstraction, looking more gloomy and grizzled than usual. "Enid is a vegetarian, you know," he remarked unexpectedly.
Claude smiled. "That could hardly make any difference to me, Mr. Royce."
The other nodded slightly. "I know. At your age you think it doesn't. Such things do make a difference, however." His lips closed over his half-dead cigar, and for some time he did not open them.
"Enid is a good girl," be said at last. "Strictly speaking, she has more brains than a girl needs. If Mrs. Royce bad another daughter at home, I'd take Enid into my office. She has good judgment. I don't know but she'd run a business better than a house." Having got this out, Mr. Royce relaxed his frown, took his cigar from his mouth, looked at it, and put it back between his teeth without relighting it.
Claude was watching him with surprise. "There's no
"Here we are," announced Mr. Royce. "I'll leave the car under this elm, and we'll go up to the north end of the field and have a look."
They crawled under the wire fence and started across the rough ground through a field of purple blossoms. Clouds of yellow butterflies darted tip before them. They walked jerkily, breaking through the sun-baked crust into the soft soil beneath. Mr. Royce lit a fresh cigar, and as be threw away the match let his hand drop on the young man's shoulder. "I always envied your father. You took my fancy when you were a little shaver, and I used to let you in to see the water-wheel. When I gave up water power and put in an engine, I said to myself; 'There's just one fellow in the country will be sorry to see the old wheel go, and that's Claude Wheeler.'"
"I hope you don't think I'm too young to marry," Claude said as they tramped on.
"No, it's right and proper a young man should marry. I don't say anything against marriage," Mr. Royce protested doggedly. "You may find some opposition in Enid's
"I want to help her get rid of them. If it's all right with you, I hope I can persuade Enid to marry me this fall."
Jason Royce turned his head quickly toward his companion, studied his artless, hopeful countenance for a moment, and then looked away with a frown.
The alfalfa field sloped upward at one corner, lay like a bright green-and-purple handkerchief thrown down on the
After a long while Mr. Royce unclasped his broad, thick-fingered miller's hands, and for a moment took out the
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
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 hillside. 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
Presently Claude came up the bank with two shining,
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,
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 bidden 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
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
There were people, even in Frankfort, who had imagination and generous impulses, but they were all, she bad 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
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.
CLAUDE was well enough to go into the fields before the harvest was over. The middle of July came, and the farmers were still cutting grain. The yield of wheat and oats was so heavy that there were not machines enough
to thrash it within the usual time. Men had to await their turn, letting their grain stand in shock until a belching black engine lumbered into the field. Rains would have been disastrous; but this was one of those "good
years" which
Every morning the sun came up a red ball, quickly drank the dew, and started a quivering excitement in all living things. In great harvest seasons like that one, the heat, the intense light, and the important work in hand
draw people together and make them friendly. Neighbours helped each other to cope with the burdensome abundance of man-nourishing grain; women and children and old men fell to and did what they could to save and
house it. Even the horses had a more varied and sociable existence than usual, going about from one farm to another to help neighbour horses drag wagons and binders and headers. They nosed the colts of old friends, ate
out of strange mangers, and drank, or refused to drink, out of strange water-troughs. Decrepit horses that lived on a pension, like the Wheelers' stiff-legged Molly and Leonard Dawson's Billy with the heaves —his
asthmatic cough could be heard for a quarter of a mile— were pressed into service now. It was wonderful, too, how
The sun was like a great visiting presence that stimulated and took its due from all animal energy. When it flung wide its cloak and stepped down over the edge of the fields at
For several weeks Claude did not have time to read the newspapers; they lay about the house in bundles, unopened, for Nat Wheeler was in the field now, working like a giant. Almost every evening Claude ran down to the
mill to see Enid for a few minutes; he did not get out of his car, and she sat on the old stile, left over from horse-back days, while she chatted with him. She said frankly that she didn't like men who had just come out of the
harvest field, and Claude did not blame her. He didn't like himself very well after his clothes began to dry on him. But the hour or two between supper and bed was the only time he had to see anybody. He slept like the
heroes of old; sank upon his bed as the thing he desired most on earth, and for a blissful moment felt the sweetness of sleep before it overpowered him. In the morning, he seemed to hear the shriek of his alarm clock for
hours before he could come up from the deep places into which he had plunged. All sorts of incongruous adventures happened to him between the first buzz of the alarm and the
Mrs. Wheeler and Mahailey always lost weight in thrashing-time, just as the horses did; this year Nat Wheeler had six hundred acres of winter wheat that would run close upon thirty bushels to the acre. Such a harvest was
as hard on the women as it was on the men. Leonard Dawson's wife, Susie, came over to help Mrs. Wheeler, but she was expecting a baby in the fall, and the heat proved too much for her. Then one of the Yoeder daughters
came; but the methodical German girl was so distracted by Mahailey's queer ways that Mrs. Wheeler said it was easier to do the work herself than to keep explaining Mahailey's psychology. Day after day ten
By the end of July the excitement quieted down. The extra leaves were taken out of the dining table, the Wheeler horses had their barn to themselves again, and the reign of terror in the henhouse was over.
One evening Mr. Wheeler came down to supper with a bundle of newspapers under his arm. "Claude, I see this war scare in Europe has bit the market. Wheat's taken a jump. They're paying eighty-eight cents in Chicago. We might as well get rid of a few hundred bushel before it drops again. We'd better begin hauling tomorrow. You and I can make two trips a day over to Vicount, by changing teams,—there's no grade to speak of."
Mrs. Wheeler, arrested in the act of pouring coffee, sat
"Give me some coffee, please," said her husband testily. "I don't have to explain the market, I've only got to take
"But unless there's some reason, why are we dragging our
wheat over to Vicount? Do you suppose it's some scheme the grain men are hiding under a war rumour? Have the
"I don't know a thing in the world about it, Evangeline, and I don't suppose. I telephoned the elevator at Vicount an hour ago, and they said they'd pay me seventy cents, subject to change in the morning quotations. Claude," with a twinkle in his eye, "you'd better not go to mill tonight. Turn in early. If we are on the road by six tomorrow, we'll be in town before the heat of the day."
"All right, sir. I want to look at the papers after supper. I haven't read anything but the headlines since before
"There's seventy cents a bushel in it, anyway," said his father, reaching for a hot biscuit.
"If there's that much, I'm somehow afraid there will be more," said Mrs. Wheeler thoughtfully. She had picked up the paper fly-brush and sat waving it irregularly, as if she were trying to brush away a swarm of confusing ideas.
"You might call up Ernest, and ask him what the Bohemian papers say about it," Mr. Wheeler suggested.
Claude went to the telephone, but was unable to get any answer from the Havels. They had probably gone to a barn-dance down in the Bohemian township. He went upstairs and sat down before an armchair full of
newspapers; he could make nothing reasonable out of the smeary telegrams in big type on the front page of the Omaha World Herald.
The German army was entering Luxembourg; he didn't know
where Luxembourg was, whether it was a city or a country; he
seemed to have some vague idea that it was a palace! His
mother had gone up to "Mahailey's library," the attic, to hunt
for a map of Europe,—a thing for which Nebraska farmers
had never had much need. But that night, on many prairie
homesteads, the women, American and foreign-born, were
Claude was so sleepy that he did not wait for his mother's return. He stumbled upstairs and undressed in the dark. The night was sultry, with thunder clouds in tbe sky and an
LATE in the afternoon of the sixth of August, Claude
and his empty wagon were bumping along the level
road over the flat country between Vicount and the
Lovely Creek valley. He had made two trips to town that
day. Though he had kept his heaviest team for the hot
At last he recognized the Havel's team a long way off, and he stopped and waited for Ernest beside a thorny hedge,
Claude and Ernest sprang to the ground at the same instant and shook bands, feeling that they had not seen each other for a long while.
"Well, what do you make of it, Ernest?"
The young man shook his head cautiously, but replied no further. He patted his horses and eased the collars on their necks.
"I waited in town for the Hastings paper," Claude went on impatiently. "England declared war last night."
"The Germans," said Ernest, "are at Liège. I know where that is. I sailed from Antwerp when I came over here."
"Yes, I saw that. Can the Belgians do anything?"
"Nothing." Ernest leaned against the wagon wheel and drawing his pipe from his pocket slowly filled it. "Nobody can do anything. The German army will go where it pleases."
"If it's as bad as that, why are the Belgians putting up a fight?"
"I don't know. It's fine,. but it will come to nothing in the end. Let me tell you something about the German army, Claude."
Pacing up and down beside the locust hedge, Ernest
"If I were at home," Ernest concluded, "I would be in the Austrian army this minute. I guess all my cousins and nephews are fighting the Russians or the Belgians already. How would you like it yourself, to be marched into a peaceful country like this, in the middle of harvest, and begin to destroy it?"
"I wouldn't do it, of course. I'd desert and be shot."
"Then your family would be persecuted. Your brothers, maybe even your father, would be made orderlies to Austrian officers and be kicked in the mouth."
"I wouldn't bother about that. I'd let my male relatives decide for themselves how often they would be kicked."
Ernest shrugged his shoulders. "You Americans brag like little boys; you would and you wouldn't! I tell you, nobody's will has anything to do with this, It is the harvest of all that has been planted. I never thought it would come in my life-time, but I knew it would come."
The boys lingered a little while, looking up at the soft radiance of the sky. There was not a cloud anywhere, and the low glimmer in the fields had imperceptibly changed to full, pure moonlight. Presently the two wagons
began to creep along the white road, and on the backless seat of each the driver sat drooping forward, lost in thought. When they reached the corner where Ernest turned south, they said
Why was Ernest so impatient with him, Claude wondered?
Mr. Wheeler came down the hill, bareheaded and coatless, as Claude drove into the barnyard. "I expect you're tired. I'll put your team away. Any news?"
"England has declared war."
Mr. Wheeler stood still a moment and scratched his head. "I guess you needn't get up early tomorrow. If this is to be sure enough war, wheat will go higher. I've thought it was bluff until now. You take the papers up to your mother."
ENID and Mrs. Royce had gone away to the Michigan sanatorium where, they spent part of every summer, and would not be back until October. Claude and his mother gave all their attention to the war despatches. Day after day, through the first two weeks of August, the bewildering news trickled from the little towns out into the farming country.
About the middle of the month came the story of the fall of the forts at Liège, battered at for nine days and finally reduced in a few hours by siege guns brought up from the rear,—guns which evidently could destroy any
fortifications that ever bad been, or ever could be constructed. Even to these quiet wheat-growing people, the siege guns before Liège were a menace; not to their safety or their goods, but to their comfortable, established
way of thinking. They introduced the greater-than-man force which afterward repeatedly brought
On the twenty-third came the news of the fall of the forts at Namur; again giving warning that an unprecedented power of destruction had broken loose in the world. A few days later the story of the wiping out of the
ancient and peaceful seat of learning at Louvain made it clear that this force was being directed toward incredible ends. By this time, too, the papers were full of accounts of the destruction of civilian populations.
Something new, and certainly evil, was at work among mankind. Nobody was ready with a name for it. None of
One afternoon in the first week of September Mrs. Wheeler was in the kitchen making cucumber pickles, when she heard Claude's car coming back from Frankfort. In a moment he entered, letting the screen door slam behind him, and threw a bundle of mail on the table.
"What do you think, Mother? The French have moved the seat of government to Bordeaux! Evidently, they don't think they can hold Paris."
Mrs. Wheeler wiped her pale, perspiring, face with the hem of her apron and sat down in the nearest chair. "You mean that Paris is not the capital of France any more? Can that be true?"
"That Is what it looks like. Though the papers say it's only a precautionary measure."
She rose. "Let's go up to the map. I don't remember exactly where Bordeaux is. Maliailey, you won't let my vinegar burn, will you?"
Claude followed her to the sitting-room, where her new map hung on the wall above the carpet lounge. Leaning against the back of a willow rocking-chair, she began to move her hand about over the brightly coloured, shiny surface, murmuring, "Yes, there is Bordeaux, so far to the south; and there is Paris."
Claude, behind her, looked over her shoulder. "Do you suppose they are going to hand their city over to the Germans,like a Christmas present? I should think they'd burn it first,
"Don't say such things." Mrs. Wheeler dropped into the deep willow chair, realizing that she was very tired, now that she had left the stove and the heat of the kitchen. She began weakly to wave the palm leaf fan before her face. "It's said to be such a beautiful city. Perhaps the Germans will spare it, as they did Brussels. They must be sick of destruction by now. Get the encyclopedia and see what it says. I've left my glasses downstairs."
Claude brought a volume from the bookcase and sat down on the lounge. He began: "Paris, the capital city of France and the Department of the Seine,—Shall I skip the history?"
"No. Read it all."
He cleared his throat and began again: "At its first appearance in history, there was nothing to foreshadow the important part which Paris was to play in Europe and in the world," etc.
Mrs. Wheeler rocked and fanned, forgetting the kitchen and the cucumbers as if they had never been. Her tired body was resting, and her mind, which was never tired, was occupied with the account of early religious
foundations under the Merovingian kings. Her eyes were always agreeably employed when they rested upon the sunburned neck, and catapult
Claude read faster and faster until he stopped with a gasp.
"Mother, there are pages of kings! We'll read that some other time. I want to find out what it's like now, and whether it's going to have any more history." He ran his finger up
Defences: Paris, in a recent German account of the greatest fortresses of the world, possesses three distinct rings of defences"—here be broke off. "Now what do you
think of that? A German account, and this is an English book! The world simply made a mistake about the Germans all along. It's as if we invited a neighbour over here and showed him our cattle and barns, and all the
time he was
Mrs. Wheeler passed her hand over her brow. "Yet we have had so many German neighbours, and never one that wasn't kind and helpful."
"I know it. Everything Mrs. Erlich ever told me about Germany made me want to go there. And the people that sing all those beautiful songs about women and children went into Belgian villages and—"
"Don't, Claude!" his mother put out her hands as if to push his words back. "Read about the defences of Paris; that's what we must think about now. I can't but believe there is one fort the Germans didn't put down in their book, and that it will stand. We know Paris is a wicked city, but there must be many God-fearing people there, and God has preserved it all these years. You saw in the paper how the churches are full all day of women praying." She leaned forward and smiled at him indulgently. "And you believe those prayers will accomplish nothing, son?"
Claude squirmed, as he always did when his mother touched upon certain subjects. "Well, you see, I can't forget that the Germans are praying, too. And I guess they are just naturally more pious than the French." Taking up the book he began
"In the low ground again, at the narrowest part of the great loop of the Marne," etc.
Claude and his mother had grown familiar with the name of that river and with the idea of its strategic importance, before it began to stand out in black headlines a few days later.
The fall ploughing bad begun as usual. Mr. Wheeler had decided to put in six hundred acres of wheat again.
Since the men were all afield, Mrs. Wheeler now went every morning to the mailbox at the crossroads, a quarter of a mile away, to get yesterday's Omaha and Kansas City papers which the carrier left. In her eagerness she opened and began to read them as she turned homeward, and her feet, never too sure, took a wandering way among sunflowers and buffalo burrs. One morning, indeed, she sat down on a red grass bank beside the road and read all the war news through before she stirred, while the grasshoppers played leap-frog over her skirts, and the gophers came out of their holes and blinked at her. That noon, when she saw Claude leading his team to the water tank, she hurried down to him without stopping to find her bonnet, and reached the windmill breathless.
"The French have stopped falling back, Claude. They are standing at the Marne. There is a great battle going on. The papers say it may decide the war. It is so near Paris that some of the army went out in taxi-cabs."
Claude drew himself up. "Well, it will decide about Paris, anyway, won't it? How many divisions?"
"I can't make out. The accounts are so confusing. But only a few of the English are there, and the French are terribly outnumbered. Your father got in before you, and he has the papers upstairs."
"They are twenty-four hours old. I'll go to Vicount tonight after I'm done work, and get the Hastings paper."
In the evening when he came back from town, he found his father and mother waiting up for him. He stopped a moment in the sitting-room. "There is not much news, except that the battle is on, and practically the whole French army is engaged. The Germans outnumber them five to three in men, and nobody knows how much in artillery. General Joffre says the French will fall back no farther." He did not sit down, but went straight upstairs to his room.
Mrs. Wheeler put out the lamp, undressed, and lay down, but not to sleep. Long afterward, Claude heard her gently closing a window, and he smiled to himself in the dark. His mother, he knew, had always thought of Paris as the
It was curious, he reflected, lying wide awake in the dark: four days ago the seat of government had been moved to Bordeaux,—with the effect that Paris seemed suddenly to have become the capital, not of France, but of the world! He knew he was not the only farmer boy who wished himself
IT was Sunday afternoon and Claude had gone down to the mill house, as Enid and her mother had returned from Michigan the day before. Mrs. Wheeler, propped back in a rocking chair, was reading, and Mr. Wheeler, in his shirt sleeves, his Sunday collar unbuttoned, was sitting at his walnut secretary, amusing himself with columns of figures. Presently he rose and yawned, stretching his arms above his head.
"Claude thinks he wants to begin building right away, up on the quarter next the timber claim. I've been figuring on the, lumber. Building materials are cheap just now, so I suppose I'd better let him go ahead."
Mrs. Wheeler looked up absently from the page. "Why, I suppose so."
Her husband sat down astride a chair, and leaning his arms on the back of it, looked at her. "What do you think of this match, anyway? I don't know as I've beard you say."
"Enid is a good, Christian girl . . ." Mrs. Wheeler began resolutely, but her sentence hung in the air like a question.
He moved impatiently. "Yes, I know. But what does a husky boy like Claude want to pick out a girl like that for? Why, Evangeline, she'll be the old woman over again!"
Apparently these misgivings were not new to Mrs. Wheeler,for she put out her hand to stop him and whispered in solemn agitation, "Don't say anything! Don't breathe!"
"Oh, I won't interfere! I never do. I'd rather have her
As soon as the fall planting was done, Claude got the well-borers out from town to drill his new well, and while they were at work he began digging his cellar. He was building his house on the level stretch beside his father's timber claim because, when he was a little boy, he had thought that grove of trees the most beautiful spot in the world. It was a square of about thirty acres, set out in ash and box-elder and cotton-woods, with a thick mulberry hedge on the south side. The trees had been neglected of late years, but if he lived up there he could manage to trim them and care for them at odd moments.
Every morning now he ran up in the Ford and worked at his cellar. He had heard that the deeper a cellar was, the better it was; and he meant that this one should be deep enough. One day Leonard Dawson stopped to see what
"My God, Claude, what do you want of a cellar as deep as that? When your wife takes a notion to go to China, you can open a trap-door and drop her through!"
Claude flung down his pick and ran up the ladder. "Enid's
"Well, you needn't get mad. I'm glad to hear it. I was sorry when the other girl went. It always looked to me like Enid had her face set for China, but I haven't seen her for a good while,— not since before she went off to Michigan with the old lady."
After Leonard was gone, Claude returned to his work, still out of humour. He was not altogether happy in his mind about Enid. When he went down to the mill it was usually Mr. Royce, not Enid, who sought to detain him, followed him down the path to the gate and seemed sorry to see him go. He could not blame Enid with any lack of interest in what he was doing. She talked and thought of nothing but the new house, and most of her suggestions were good. He often wished she would ask for something unreasonable and
As the house began to take shape, Enid came up often in her car, to watch its growth, to show Claude samples of wall-papers and draperies, or a design for a window-seat she had cut from some magazine. There could be no question of her pride in every detail. The disappointing thing was that she seemed more interested in the house than in him. These months when they could be together as much as they pleased, she treated merely as a period of time in which they were building a house.
Everything would be all right when they were married, Claude told himself. He believed in the transforming power of marriage, as his mother believed in the miraculous effects of conversion. Marriage reduced all women to a common
But he was lonely, all the same. He lavished upon the little house the solicitude and cherishing care that Enid seemed not to need. He stood over the carpenters urging the greatest nicety in the finish of closets and cupboards, the convenient placing of shelves, the exact joining of sills and casings. Often he stayed late in the evening, after the workmen with their noisy boots had gone home to supper. He sat down on a rafter or on the skeleton of the upper porch and quite lost himself in brooding, in anticipation of things that seemed as far away as ever. The dying light, the quiet stars coming out, were friendly and sympathetic. One night a bird flew in and fluttered wildly about among the partitions, shrieking with fright before it darted out into the dusk through one of the upper windows and found its way to freedom.
When the carpenters were ready to put in the staircase, Claude telephoned Enid and asked her to come and show them just what height she wanted the steps made. His mother had always had to climb stairs that were too steep. Enid stopped her car at the Frankfort High School at four o'clock and persuaded Gladys Farmer to drive out with her.
When they arrived they found Claude working on the lattice enclosure of the back porch. "Claude is like Jonah," Enid laughed. "He wants to plant gourd vines here, so they will run over the lattice and make shade. I can think of other vines that might be more ornamental."
Claude put down his hammer and said coaxingly: "Have you ever seen a gourd vine when it had something to climb
Enid smiled indulgently. "Well, I suppose you'll let me have clematis for the front porch, anyway? The men are getting ready to leave, so we'd better see about the steps."
After the workmen bad gone, Claude took the girls upstairs by the ladder. They emerged from a little entry into a large room which extended over both the front and back parlours. The carpenters called it "the pool hall." There were two long windows, like doors, opening upon the porch roof, and in the sloping ceiling were two dormer windows, one looking north to the timber claim and the other south toward Lovely Creek. Gladys at once felt a singular pleasantness about this chamber, empty and unplastered as it was. "What a lovely room!" she exclaimed.
Claude took her up eagerly. "Don't you think so? You see it's my idea to I have the second floor for ourselves, instead of cutting it up into little boxes as people usually do. We can come up here and forget the farm and the kitchen and all our troubles. I've made a big closet for each of us, and got
Enid laughed. "Not only for preachers, Claude. For Gladys, when she comes to visit us — you see she likes it — and for your mother when she comes to spend a week and rest. I don't think we ought to take the best room for ourselves."
"Why not?" Claude argued hotly. "I'm building the whole
Gladys sat down on the low window-sill. "Enid, you'd be foolish to keep this for a guest room. Nobody would ever enjoy it as much as you would. You can see the whole country from here."
Enid smiled, but showed no sign of relenting. "Let's wait and watch the sun go down. Be careful, Claude. It makes me nervous to see you lying there."
He was stretched out on the edge of the roof, one leg
"If I make this into a balcony," Claude murmured, "the peak of the roof will always throw a shadow over it in the afternoon, and at night the stars will be right overhead. It will be a fine place to sleep in harvest time."
"Oh, you could always come up here to sleep on a hot night," Enid said quickly.
"It wouldn't be the same."
They sat watching the light die out of the sky, and Enid and Gladys drew close together as the coolness of the autumn evening came on. The three friends were thinking about the same thing; and yet, if by some sorcery
each had begun to speak his thoughts aloud, amazement and bitterness would have fallen upon all. Enid's reflections were the most blameless. The discussion about the guest room had reminded her of Brother Weldon. In
September, on her way to Michigan with Mrs. Royce, she had stopped for a day in Lincoln to take
Gladys, too, was lost in her own thoughts, sitting with that ease which made her seem rather indolent, her head resting against the empty window frame, facing the setting sun. The rosy light made her brown eyes gleam
like old copper, and there was a moody look in them, as if in her mind she were defying something. When he happened to glance at her, it occurred to Claude that it was a hard destiny to be the
"I forgot, Enid, I have a secret to tell you. Over in the timber claim the other day I started up a flock of quail. They must be the only ones left in all this neighbourhood, and I doubt if they ever come out of the timber. The bluegrass hasn't been mowed in there for years,— not since I first went away to school,— and maybe they live on the grass seeds. In summer, of course, there are mulberries."
Enid wondered whether the birds could have learned enough about the world to stay hidden in the timber lot. Claude was sure they bad.
"Nobody ever goes near the place except Father; he stops there sometimes. Maybe he has seen them and never said a word. It would be just like him." He told them he had scattered shelled corn in the grass, so that the birds would not be tempted to fly over into Leonard Dawson's cornfield. "If Leonard saw them, he'd likely take a shot at them."
"Why don't you ask him not to?" Enid suggested.
Claude laughed. "That would be asking a good deal. When a bunch of quail rise out of a cornfield they're a mighty tempting sight, if a man likes hunting. We'll have a picnic for you when you come out next summer, Gladys. There are some pretty places over there in the timber."
Gladys started up. "Why, it's night already! It's lovely here, but you must get me home, Enid."
They found it dark inside. Claude took Enid down the ladder and out to her car, and then went back for Gladys. She was sitting on the floor at the top of the ladder. Giving her his band he helped her to rise.
"So you like my little house," he said gratefully.
"Yes. Oh, yes!" Her voice was full of feeling, but she did not exert herself to say more. Claude descended in front of her to keep her from slipping. She hung back while he led her through confusing doorways and helped
her over the piles of laths that littered the floors. At the edge of the gaping cellar entrance she stopped and leaned wearily on his arm for a moment. She did not speak, but he understood that his new house made her sad;
that she, too, had come to the place where she must turn out of the old path. He longed to whisper
ENID decided that she would be married in the first week
of June. Early in May the plasterers and painters
began to be busy in the new house. The walls began
to shine, and Claude went about all day, oiling and polishing
the hard-pine floors and wainscoting. He bated to have
Enid often brought her work and sat sewing on the front porch while Claude was rubbing the woodwork inside the house, or digging and planting outside. This was the best part of his courtship. It seemed to him that be
had never spent such happy days before. If Enid did not come, he kept
"When are you going over to the timber claim with me?" be asked, dropping on the ground beside her one warm, windy afternoon. Enid was sitting on the porch floor, her back against a pillar, and her feet on one of those round mats of pursley that grow over hard-beaten earth. "I've found my flock of quail again. They live in the deep grass, over by a ditch that holds water most of the year. I'm going to plant a few rows of peas in there, so they'll have a feeding ground at home. I consider Leonard's cornfield a great danger. I don't know whether to take him into my confidence or not."
"You've told Ernest Havel, I suppose?"
"Oh, yes!" Claude replied, trying not to be aware of the little note of acrimony in her voice. "He's perfectly safe. That place is a paradise for birds. The trees are full of nests. You can stand over there in the morning and hear the young robins squawking for their breakfast. Come up early tomorrow morning and go over with me, won't you? But wear heavy shoes; it's wet in the long grass."
While they were talking a sudden whirlwind swept round the corner of the house, caught up the little mound of folded lace corset-covers and strewed them over the dusty yard. Claude ran after them with Enid's flowered
workbag and thrust them into it as he came upon one after another, fluttering in the weeds. When he returned, Enid had folded her
"I think so." He hurried toward the car to hide his guilty face. One little lace thing he had not put into the bag, but had thrust into his pocket.
The next morning Enid came up early to hear the birds in the timber.
0N the night before his wedding Claude went to bed early. He had been dashing about with Ralph all day in the car, making final preparations, and was worn out. He fell asleep almost at once. The women of the household could not so easily forget the great event of tomorrow. After the supper dishes were washed, Mahailey clambered up to the attic to get the quilt she had so long been saving for a wedding present for Claude. She took it out of the chest, unfolded it, and counted the stars in the pattern—counting was an accomplishment she was proud of—before she wrapped it up. It was to go down to the mill house with the other presents tomorrow. Mrs. Wheeler went to bed many times that night. She kept thinking of things that ought to be looked after; getting up and going to make sure that Claude's heavy underwear had been put into his trunk, against the chance of cold in the mountains; or creeping downstairs to see that the six roasted chickens which were to help out at the wedding supper were securely covered from the cats. As she went about these tasks, she prayed constantly. She had not prayed so long and fervently since the battle of the Marne.
Early the next morning Ralph loaded the big car with the presents and baskets of food and ran down to the Royces'. Two motors from town were already standing in the mill yard; they had brought a company of girls who
came with all the June roses in Frankfort to trim the house for the wedding. When Ralph tooted his horn, half-a-dozen of them ran out to
Gladys Farmer had not been able to leave her classes at the High School to help in this friendly work, but at eleven o'clock a livery automobile drove up, laden with white and pink peonies from her front yard, and bringing
a box of hothouse flowers she had ordered for Enid from Hastings. The girls admired them, but declared that Gladys was extravagant, as usual; the flowers from her own yard would really have been enough. The car was
driven by a lank, ragged boy who worked about the town garage, and who was called "Silent Irv," because nobody could ever get a word out of him. He had almost no voice at all,—a thin little squeak in the top of his throat,
like the gasping whisper of a medium in her trance state. When he came to the front door, both arms full, of peonies, he
"These are from Miss Farmer. There are some more down there."
The girls went back to his car with him, and he took out a square box, tied up with white ribbons and little silver bells, containing the bridal bouquet.
"How did you happen to get these?" Ralph asked the thin boy. "I was to go to town for them."
The messenger swallowed. "Miss Farmer told me if there were any other flowers at the station marked for here, I should bring them along."
"That was nice of her." Ralph thrust his hand into his
A pink flush swept over the boy's pale face,— a delicate face under ragged hair, contracted by a kind of shrinking unhappiness. His eyes were always half-closed, as if he did not want to see the world around him, or to be seen by it. He went about like somebody in a dream. "Miss Farmer," he
"Well, she thinks of everything!" exclaimed one of the girls. "You used to go to school to Gladys, didn't you, Irv?"
"Yes, mam." He got into his car without opening the door, slipping like an eel round the steering-rod, and drove off.
The girls followed Ralph up the gravel walk toward the house. One whispered to the others: "Do you suppose Gladys will come out tonight with Bayliss Wheeler? I always thought she had a pretty warm spot in her heart for Claude, myself."
Some one changed the subject. "I can't get over hearing Irv talk so much. Gladys must have put a spell on him."
"She was always kind to him in school," said the girl who had questioned the silent boy. "She said he was good in his studies, but he was so frightened he could never recite. She let him write out the answers at his desk."
Ralph stayed for lunch, playing about with the girls until his mother telephoned for him. "Now I'll have to go home and look after my brother, or he'll turn up tonight in a striped shirt."
"Give him our love," the girls called after him, "and tell him not to be late."
As he drove toward the farm, Ralph met Dan, taking
Dan grinned. "Naw. I left him doin' as well as could be expected."
Mrs. Wheeler met Ralph on the stairs. "He's up in his room. He complains his new shoes are too tight. I think it's nervousness. Perhaps he'll let you shave him; I'm sure he'll cut himself. And I wish the barber hadn't cut his hair so short, Ralph. I hate this new fashion of shearing men behind the ears. The back of his neck is the ugliest part of a man." She spoke with such resentment that Ralph broke into a laugh.
"Why, Mother, I thought all men looked alike to you! Anyhow, Claude's no beauty."
"When will you want your bath? I'll have to manage so that everybody won't be calling for hot water at once." She turned to Mr. Wheeler who sat writing a check at the secretary. "Father, could you take your bath now, and be out of the way?"
"Bath?" Mr. Wheeler shouted, "I don't want any bath! I'm not going to be married tonight. I guess we don't have to boil the whole house for Enid."
Ralph snickered and shot upstairs. He found Claude sitting on the bed, with one shoe off and one shoe on. A pile of socks lay scattered on the rug. A suitcase stood open on one chair and a black travelling bag on another.
"Are you sure they're too small?" Ralph asked.
"About four sizes."
"Well, why didn't you get them big enough?"
"I did. That shark in Hastings worked off another pair on me when I wasn't looking. That's all right," snatching away the shoe his brother had picked up to examine. "I don't
"They won't know yet. It's seven hours till it's due."
"Then telephone later. But find out, somehow. I don't want to stand around that station, waiting for the train."
Ralph whistled. Clearly, his young man was going to be hard to manage. He proposed a bath as a soothing measure. No, Claude had bad his bath. Had he, then, packed his
"How the devil can I pack it when I don't know what I'm going to put on?"
"You'll put on one shirt and one pair of socks. I'm going to get some of this stuff out of the way for you." Ralph caught up a handful of socks and fell to sorting them. Several bad bright red spots on the toe. He began to laugh.
"I know why your shoe hurts, you've cut your foot!"
Claude sprang up as if a hornet had stung him. "Will you get out of here," he shouted, "and let me alone?"
Ralph vanished. He told his mother he would dress at once, as they might have to use force with Claude at the last moment.
The wedding ceremony was to be at eight, supper was to follow, and Claude and Enid were to leave Frankfort at 10:25, on the Denver express. At six o'clock, when Ralph knocked at his brother's door, he found him shaved and brushed, and dressed, except for his coat. His tucked shirt was not rumpled, and his tie was properly knotted. Whatever pain they concealed, his patent leather shoes were smooth and glistening and resolutely pointed.
"Are you packed?" Ralph asked in astonishment.
"Nearly. I wish you'd go over things and make them look
Ralph looked outraged. "Well, of all ingratitude!
"Yes, yes, I know. Don't rattle me. I forgot to put any handkerchiefs in my trunk, so you'll have to get the whole bunch in somewhere."
Mr. Wheeler appeared in the doorway, his Sunday black trousers, gallowsed up high over a white shirt, wafting a rich odor of bayrum from his tumbled hair. He held a thin folded, paper delicately between his thick fingers.
"Where is your bill-book, son?"
Claude caught up his discarded trousers and extracted a square of leather from the pocket. His father took it and placed the bit of paper inside with the bank notes. "You may want to pick up some trifle your wife fancies," he said. "Have you got your railroad tickets in here? Here is your trunk check Dan brought back. Don't forget, I've put it in with your tickets and marked it C. W., so you'll know which is your check and which is Enid's."
"Yes, sir. Thank you, sir."
Claude had already drawn from the bank all the money he would need. This additional bank check was Mr. Wheeler's admission that he was sorry for some sarcastic remarks he bad made a few days ago, when he discovered that Claude had reserved a stateroom on the Denver express. Claude had
At seven o'clock the Wheeler family set out in the two cars that stood waiting by the windmill. Mr. Wheeler drove the big Cadillac, and Ralph took Mahailey and Dan in the Ford. When they reached the mill house the outer yard was already black with motors, and the porch and parlours were full of people talking and moving about.
Claude went directly upstairs. Ralph began to seat the guests, arranging the folding chairs in such a way as to leave a passage from the foot of the stairs to the floral arch he had constructed that morning. The preacher had his Bible in his hand and was standing under the light, hunting for his chapter. Enid would have preferred to have Mr. Weldon come down from Lincoln to marry her, but that would have wounded Mr. Snowberry deeply. After all, he was her minister, though he was not eloquent and persuasive like Arthur Weldon. He had fewer English words at his command than most human beings, and even those did not come to him readily. In his pulpit he sought for them and struggled with them until drops of perspiration rolled from his forehead and fell upon his coarse, matted brown beard. But be believed what he said, and language was so little an accomplishment with him that he was not tempted to say more than he believed. He bad been a drummer boy in the Civil War, on the losing side, and he was a simple, courageous man.
Ralph was to be both usher and best man. Gladys Farmer could not be one of the bridesmaids because she was to play the wedding march. At eight o'clock Enid and Claude came downstairs together, conducted by Ralph and followed by
When it was over, Enid went upstairs to put on her
Ralph, as master of ceremonies, kept his head and forgot nothing. When it was time to start, he tapped Claude on the shoulder, cutting his father short in one of his best stories. Contrary to custom, the bridal couple were to go to the station unaccompanied, and they vanished from the head of the table with only a nod and a smile to the guests. Ralph hurried them into the light car, where be had already stowed Enid's hand luggage. Only wizened little Mrs. Royce slipped out from the kitchen to bid them good-bye.
That evening some bad boys had come out from town and strewn the road near the mill with dozens of broken glass bottles, after which they hid in the wild plum bushes to wait for the fun. Ralph's was the first car out, and though his lights glittered on this bed of jagged glass, there was no time to stop; the road was ditched on either side, so he had to drive straight ahead, and got into Frankfort on flat tires. The express whistled just as he pulled up at the station. He and Claude caught up the four pieces of hand luggage and put them in the stateroom. Leaving Enid there with the bags, the two boys went to the rear platform of the observation car to talk until the last moment. Ralph checked off on his fingers the list of things he had promised Claude to attend to. Claude thanked him feelingly. He felt that without Ralph he could never have got married at all. They bad never been such good friends as during the last fortnight.
The wheels began to turn. Ralph gripped Claude's hand, ran to the front of the car and stepped off. As Claude passed him, he stood waving his handkerchief,— a rather funny figure under the station lights, in his black clothes and his stiff straw
After he was gone, Claude looked at his watch, threw away the end of his cigar, and went back through the Pullman cars. The passengers had gone to bed; the overhead lights were always turned low when the train left Frankfort. He made his way through the aisles of swaying green curtains, and tapped at the door of his stateroom. It opened a little way, and Enid stood there in a white silk dressing-gown with many ruffles, her hair in two smooth braids over her shoulders.
"Claude," she said in a low voice, "would you mind getting a berth somewhere out in the car tonight? The porter says they are not all taken. I'm not feeling very well. I think the dressing on the chicken salad must have been too rich."
He answered mechanically. "Yes, certainly. Can't I get you something?"
"No, thank you. Sleep will do me more good than
She closed the door, and be heard the lock slip. He stood looking at the highly polished wood of the panel for a moment, then turned irresolutely and went back along the slightly swaying aisle of green curtains. In the observation car he
"This car is closed for the night, sah. Is you the gen'leman from the stateroom in fourteen? Do you want a lower?"
"No, thank you. Is there a smoking car?"
"They is the day-coach smokah, but it ain't likely very clean at this time o' night."
"That's all right. It's forward?" Claude absently handed him a coin, and the porter conducted him to a very dirty car where the floor was littered with newspapers and cigar stumps, and the leather cushions were grey with dust. A few desperate looking men lay about with their shoes off and their suspenders banging down their back. The sight of them reminded Claude that his left foot was very sore, and that his shoes must have been hurting him for some time. He pulled them off, and thrust his feet, in their silk socks, on the opposite seat.
On that long, dirty, uncomfortable ride Claude felt many things, but the paramount feeling was homesickness. His hurt was of a kind that made him turn with a sort of aching cowardice to the old, familiar things that were
as sure as the sunrise. If only the sagebrush plain, over which the stars were shining, could suddenly break up and resolve itself into the windings of Lovely Creek, with his father's house on the hill, dark and silent in the
summer night! When he closed his eyes lie could see the light in his mother's window; and, lower down, the glow of Mahailey's lamp, where she sat nodding and mending his old shirts. Human love was a
By morning the storm of anger, disappointment, and
Day broke with silvery brightness on the summer sage. The sky grew pink, the sand grew gold. The dawn-wind brought through the windows the acrid smell of the sagebrush: an odour that is peculiarly stimulating in the early morning, when it always seems to promise freedom . . . large spaces, new beginnings, better days.
The train was due in Denver at eight o'clock. Exactly at seven thirty Claude knocked at Enid's door,—this time firmly. She was dressed, and greeted him with a fresh, smiling face, holding her bat in her hand.
"Are you feeling better?" he asked.
"Oh, yes! I am perfectly all right this morning. I've put out all your things for you, there on the seat."
He glanced at them. "Thank you. But I won't have time to change, I'm afraid."
"Oh, won't you? I'm so sorry I forgot to give you your bag last night. But you must put on another necktie, at least. You look too much like a groom."
"Do I?" he asked, with a scarcely perceptible curl of his lip.
Everything he needed was neatly arranged on the plush seat; shirt, collar, tie, brushes, even a handkerchief. Those in his pockets were black from dusting off the cinders that blew in all night, and he threw them down and took up the clean one. There was a damp spot on it, and as he unfolded it he recognized the scent of a cologne Enid often used. For some reason this attention unmanned him. He felt the smart of tears in his eyes, and to hide them bent over the metal basin
"How terribly smoky you are, Claude. I hope you don't smoke before breakfast?"
"No. I was in the smoking car awhile. I suppose my Clothes got full of it."
"You are covered with dust and cinders, too!" She took the clothes broom from the rack and began to brush him.
Claude caught her hand. "Don't, please!" he said sharply. "The porter can do that, for me."
Enid watched him furtively as he closed and strapped his suitcase. She had often heard that men were cross before breakfast.
"Sure you've forgotten nothing?" he asked before he closed her bag.
"Yes. I never lose things on the train,—do you?"
"Sometimes," he replied guardedly, not looking up as he snapped the catch.
CLAUDE was to continue farming with his father, and after he returned from his wedding journey, he fell at once to work. The harvest was almost as abundant as that of the summer before, and he was busy in the fields six days a week.
One afternoon in August he came home with his team, watered and fed the horses in a leisurely way, and then entered his house by the back door. Enid, he knew, would not be there. She had gone to Frankfort to a meeting of the Anti-Saloon League. The Prohibition party was bestirring itself in Nebraska that summer, confident of voting the State dry the following year, which purpose it triumphantly accomplished.
Enid's kitchen, full of the afternoon sun, glittered with new paint, spotless linoleum, and blue-and-white cooking vessels. In the dining-room the cloth was laid, and the table was neatly set for one. Claude opened the icebox, where his supper was arranged for him; a dish of canned salmon with a white sauce; hardboiled eggs, peeled and lying in a nest of lettuce loaves; a bowl of ripe tomatoes, a bit of cold rice-pudding; cream and butter. He placed these things on the table, cut some bread, and after carelessly washing his face and hands, sat down to eat in his working shirt. He propped the newspaper against a red glass water pitcher and read the war
news while he had his supper. He was annoyed when he heard heavy footsteps coming around the house. Leonard Dawson stuck his head in at the kitchen door, and Claude rose quickly and reached for his hat; but Leonard came in, uninvited, and sat
"Go ahead and finish your supper," he cried. "Having a wife with an electric is next thing to having no wife at all. How they do like to roll around! I've been mighty blamed careful to see that Susie never learned to drive a car. See here, Claude, how soon do you figure you'll be able to let me have the thrasher? My wheat will begin to sprout in the shock pretty soon. Do you guess your father would be willing to work on Sunday, if I helped you, to let the machine off a day earlier?"
"I'm afraid not. Mother wouldn't like it. We never have done that, even when we were crowded."
"Well, I think I'll go over and have a talk with your mother. If she could look inside my wheat shocks, maybe I could convince her it's pretty near a case of your neighbour's ox falling into a pit on the Sabbath day."
"That's a good idea. She's always reasonable."
Leonard rose. "What's the news?"
"The Germans have torpedoed an English passenger ship, the Arabic; coming this way, too."
"That's all right," Leonard declared. "Maybe Americans will stay at home now, and mind their own business. I don't care how they chew each other up over there, not a bit! I'd as soon one got wiped off the map as another."
"Your grandparents were English people, weren't they?"
"That's a long while ago. Yes, my grandmother wore a cap and little white curls, and I tell Susie I wouldn't mind if the baby turned out to have my grandmother's skin. She had the finest complexion I ever saw."
As they stepped out of the back door, a troop of white chickens with red combs ran squawking toward them. It was the hour at which the poultry was usually fed. Leonard stopped to admire them. "You've got a fine lot of hens. I always did like white leghorns. Where are all your roosters?"
"We've only got one. He's shut up in the coop. The brood hens are setting. Enid is going to try raising winter frys."
"Only one rooster? And may I ask what these hens do?"
Claude laughed. "They lay eggs, just the same,—better. It's the fertile eggs that spoil in warm weather."
This information seemed to make Leonard angry. "I never heard of such damned nonsense," he blustered. "I raise chickens on a natural basis, or I don't raise 'em at all." He jumped into his car for fear he would say more.
When he got home his wife was lifting supper, and the baby sat near her in its buggy, playing with a rattle. Dirty and sweaty as he was, Leonard picked up the clean baby and began to kiss it and smell it, rubbing his stubbly chin in the soft creases of its neck. The little girl was beside herself with delight.
"Go and wash up for supper, Len," Susie called from the stove. He put down the baby and began splashing in the tin basin, talking with his eyes shut.
"Susie, I'm in an awful temper. I can't stand that damned wife of Claude's!"
She was spearing roasting ears out of a big iron pot and looked up through the steam. "Why, have you seen her? I was listening on the telephone this morning and heard her tell Bayliss she would be in town until late."
"Oh, yes! She went to town all right, and he's over there eating a cold supper by himself. That woman's a fanatic. She ain't content with practising prohibition on humankind; she's begun now on the hens." While he placed the chairs and wheeled the baby up to the table, he explained Enid's method of raising poultry to his wife. She said she really didn't see any harm in it.
"Now be honest, Susie; did you ever know hens would keep on laying without a rooster?"
"No, I didn't; but I was brought up the old-fashioned way. Enid has poultry books and garden books, and all such things. I don't doubt she gets good ideas from them. But anyhow, you be careful. She's our nearest neighbour, and I don't want to have trouble with her."
"I'll have to keep out of her way, then. If she tries to do any missionary work among my chickens, I'll tell her a few home truths her husband's too bashful to tell her. It's my opinion she's got that boy cowed already."
"Now, Len, you know she won't bother your chickens. You keep quiet. But Claude does seem to sort of avoid people," Susie admitted, filling her husband's plate again. "Mrs. Joe Havel says Ernest don't go to Claude's any more. It seems Enid went over there and wanted Ernest to paste some
"Do you suppose Claude relished having that preacher
"Well, anyhow, I guess Claude had more to eat when Brother Weldon was staying there. Preachers won't be fed on calories, or whatever it is Enid calls 'em," said Susie, who was given to looking on the bright side of things. "Claude's wife keeps a wonderful kitchen; but so could I, if I never cooked any more than she does."
Leonard gave her a meaning look. "I don't believe you would live with the sort of man you could feed out of a tin can."
"No, I don't believe I would." She pushed the buggy toward him. "Take her up, Daddy. She wants to play with you."
Leonard sat the baby on his shoulder and carried her off to show her the pigs. Susie kept laughing to herself as she cleared the table and washed the dishes; she was much amused by what her husband had told her.
Late that evening, when Leonard was starting for the barn to see that all was well before lie went to bed, he observed a discreet black object rolling along the highroad in the
"See, there she goes; going home to report the success of the meeting to Claude. Wouldn't that be a nice way to have your wife coming in?"
"Now, Leonard, if Claude likes it—"
"Likes it?" Big Leonard drew himself up. "What can he do, poor kid? He's stung!"
AFTER Leonard left him, Claude cleared away the remains of his supper and watered the gourd vine before he went to milk. It was not really a gourd vine at all, but summer-squash, of the crook-necked, warty, orange-coloured variety, and it was now full of ripe squashes, hanging by strong stems among the rough green leaves and prickly tendrils. Claude had watched its rapid growth and the opening of its splotchy yellow blossoms, feeling grateful to a thing that did so lustily what it was put there to do. He had the same feeling for his little Jersey cow, which came home every night with full udders and gave down her milk willingly, keeping her tail out of his face, as only a well-disposed cow will do.
His milking done, he sat down on the front porch and lit
a cigar. While he smoked, he did not think about anything
but the quiet and the slow cooling of the atmosphere, and how
good it was to sit still. The moon swam up over the bare
wheat fields, big and magical, like a great flower. Presently
he got some bath towels, went across the yard to the
For some reason, Claude began to think about the far-off times and countries it had shone upon. He never thought of the sun as coming from distant lands, or as having taken part in human life in other ages. To him, the sun rotated about the wheatfields. But the moon, somehow, came out of the historic past, and made him think of Egypt and the Pharaohs, Babylon and the hanging gardens. She seemed particularly to have looked down upon the follies and
Inside of living people, too, captives languished. Yes,
At last the black cubical object which had caught Leonard Dawson's wrathful eye, came rolling along the highroad. Claude snatched up his clothes and towels, and without waiting to make use of either, he ran, a white man across a bare white yard. Gaining the shelter of the house, he found his bathrobe, and fled to the upper porch, where he lay down in the hammock. Presently he heard his name called, pronounced as if it were spelled "Clod." His wife came up the stairs and looked out at him. He lay motionless, with his eyes closed. She went away. When all was quiet again he looked off at the still country, and the moon in the dark indigo sky. His revelation still possessed him, making his whole body sensitive, like a tightly strung bow. In the morning be had forgotten, or was ashamed of what had seemed so true and so entirely his own the night before. He agreed, for the most part, that it was better not to think about such things, and when he could he avoided thinking.
AFTER the heavy work of harvest was over, Mrs. Wheeler often persuaded her husband, when he was starting off in his buckboard, to take her as far as Claude's new house. She was glad Enid didn't keep her parlour dark, as Mrs. Royce kept hers. The doors and
Although within a few months Enid's car travelled more
than two thousand miles for the Prohibition cause, it could not
be said that she neglected her house for reform. Whether
she neglected her husband depended upon one's conception of
what was his due. When Mrs. Wheeler saw how well their
little establishment was conducted, how cheerful and attractive
Enid looked when one happened to drop in there, she wondered
that Claude was not happy. And Claude himself wondered.
If his marriage disappointed him in some respects, he ought
to be a man, he told himself, and make the best of what was
This repugnance was more than physical; she disliked ardour of any kind, even religious ardour. She had been fonder of Claude before she married him than she was now; but she hoped for a readjustment. Perhaps sometime she could like him again in exactly the same way. Even Brother Weldon had hinted to her that for the sake of their future tranquillity she must be lenient with the boy. And she thought she had been lenient. She could not understand his moods of
Claude used to lie there and watch the clouds, saying to
himself, "It's the end of everything for me." Other men
than he must have been disappointed, and he wondered how
they bore it through a lifetime. Claude had been a well-
behaved boy because he was an idealist; he had looked forward
to being wonderfully happy in love, and to deserving his
happiness. He had never dreamed that it might be
Sometimes now, when he went out into the fields on a bright summer morning, it seemed to him that Nature not only smiled, but broadly laughed at him. He suffered in his pride,
In her person Enid was still attractive to him. He
Enid was rather more indulgent with his father than with any one else, he noticed. Mr. Wheeler stopped to see her almost every day, and even took her driving in his old buckboard. Bayliss came out from town to spend the evening occasionally. Enid's vegetarian suppers suited him, and as she worked with him in the Prohibition campaign, they always had business to discuss. Bayliss had a social as well as a hygienic prejudice against alcohol, and he hated it less for the harm it did than for the pleasure it gave. Claude consistently refused to take any part in the activities of the Anti-Saloon League, or to distribute what Bayliss and Enid called "our literature."
In the farming towns the term "literature" was applied only to a special kind of printed matter; there was
Enid did not understand her husband's indifference to a burning question, and could only attribute it to the influence of Ernest Havel. She sometimes asked Claude to go with her to one of her committee meetings. If it was a Sunday, he said he was tired and wanted to read the paper. If it was a week-day, he had something to do at the barn, or meant to clear out the timber claim. He did, indeed, saw off a few dead limbs, and cut down a tree the lightning had blasted. Further than that he wouldn't have let anybody clear the timber lot; be would have died defending it.
The timber claim was his refuge. In the open, grassy spots, shut in by the bushy walls of yellowing ash trees, he felt
FROM her upstairs window Mrs. Wheeler could see Claude moving back
and forth in the west field, drilling wheat. She felt lonely for him. He didn't
come home as often as he might. She had begun to wonder whether he
was one of those people who are always discontented; but
After watching from the window for a few moments, she turned to the telephone and called up Claude's house, asking Enid whether she would mind if he came there for dinner. "Mahailey and I get lonesome with Mr. Wheeler away so much," she added.
"Why, no, Mother Wheeler, of course not." Enid spoke cheerfully, as she always did. "Have you any one there you can send over to tell him?"
"I thought I would walk over myself, Enid. It's not far, if I take my time."
Mrs. Wheeler left the house a little before noon and stopped at the creek to rest before she climbed the long hill. At the edge of the field she sat down against a grassy bank and waited until the horses came tramping tip the long rows. Claude saw her and pulled them in.
"Anything wrong, Mother?" he called.
"Oh, no! I'm going to take you home for dinner with me, that's all. I telephoned Enid."
He unhooked his team, and he and his mother started down the hill together, walking behind the horses. Though they had not been alone like this for a long while, she felt it best to talk about impersonal things.
"Don't let me forget to give you an article about the
"Edith Cavell? I've read about it," he answered listlessly "It's nothing to be surprised at. If they could sink the Lusitania they could shoot an English nurse, certainly."
"Someway I feel as if this were different," his mother murmured. "It's like the hanging of John Brown. I wonder they could find soldiers to execute the sentence."
"Oh, I guess they have plenty of such soldiers!"
Mrs. Wheeler looked up at him. "I don't see how we can stay out of it much longer, do you? I suppose our army wouldn't be a drop in the bucket, even if we could get it over. They tell us we can be more useful in our agriculture and manufacturies than we could by going into the war. I only hope it isn't campaign talk. I do distrust the
Claude laughed. "Why, Mother, I guess there's no party politics in this."
She shook her head. "I've never yet found a public
"Yes. I'll have time to do some things about the place, now. I'm going to make a good ice-house and put up my own ice this winter."
"Were you thinking of going up to Lincoln, for a little?"
"I guess not."
Mrs. Wheeler sighed. His tone meant that he had turned his back on old pleasures and old friends.
"Have you and Enid taken tickets for the lecture course in Frankfort?"
"I think so, Mother," he answered a little impatiently. "I told her she could attend to it when she was in town some day."
"Of course," his mother persevered, "some of the programs are not very good, but we ought to patronize them and make the best of what we have."
He knew, and his mother knew, that he was not very good at that. His horses stopped at the water tank. "Don't wait for me. I'll be along in a minute." Seeing her
She blinked up at him with that smile in which her eyes almost disappeared. "I thought I was smart that time!"
It was a comfort, she reflected, as she hurried up the hill, to get hold of him again, to get his attention, even.
While Claude was washing for dinner, Mahailey came to him with a page of newspaper cartoons, illustrating German
"Mr. Claude," she asked, "how comes it all them Germans is such ugly lookin' people? The Yoeders and the German folks round here ain't ugly lookin'."
Claude put her off indulgently. "Maybe it's the ugly ones that are doing the fighting, and the ones at home are nice, like our neighbours."
"Then why don't they make their soldiers stay home, an' not go breakin' other people's things, an' turnin' 'em out of
"You'll have to tell me about it again sometime, Mahailey. I must have my dinner and get back to work. If we don't get our wheat in, those people over there won't have anything to eat, you know."
The picture papers meant a great deal to Mahailey, because she could faintly remember the Civil War. While she pored over photographs of camps and battlefields and devastated villages, things came back to her; the companies of dusty Union infantry that used to stop to drink at her mother's cold
CLAUDE had been married a year and a half. One December morning he got a telephone message from his father-in-law, asking him to come in to Frankfort at once. He found Mr. Royce sunk in his desk-chair, smoking as usual, with several foreign-looking letters on the table before him. As he took these out of their envelopes and sorted the pages, Claude noticed how unsteady his hands had become. One letter, from the chief of the medical staff in the mission school where Caroline Royce taught, informed Mr. Royce that his daughter was seriously ill in the mission hospital. She would have to be sent to a more salubrious part of the country for rest and treatment, and would not be strong enough to return to her duties for a year or more. If some member of her family could come out to take care of her, it would relieve the school authorities of great anxiety. There was also a letter from a fellow teacher, and a rather incoherent one from Caroline herself. After Claude finished reading them, Mr. Royce pushed a box of cigars toward him and began to talk despondently about missionaries.
"I could go to her," he complained, "but what good would that do? I'm not in sympathy with her ideas, and it would only fret her. You can see she's made her mind up not to come home. I don't believe in one people trying to force their ways or their religion on another. I'm not that kind of man." He sat looking at his cigar. After a long pause he
"Oh, she will have to know about it, Mr. Royce. If she feels that she ought to go to Carrie, it wouldn't be right for me to interfere."
Mr. Royce shook his head. "I don't know. It don't seem fair that China should hang over you, too."
When Claude got home he remarked as he handed Enid the letters, "Your father has been a good deal upset by this. I never saw him look so old as he did today."
Enid studied their contents, sitting at her orderly little desk, while Claude pretended to read the paper.
"It seems clear that I am the one to go," she said when she had finished.
"You think it's necessary for some one to go? I don't see it."
"It would look very strange if none of us went," Enid replied with spirit.
"How, look strange?"
"Why, it would look to her associates as if her family had no feeling."
"0h, if that's all!" Claude smiled perversely and took up
"What a mean thing to say, Claude!" She rose sharply, then hesitated, perplexed. "People here know me better than that. It isn't as if you couldn't be perfectly comfortable at your mother's." As he did not glance up from his paper, she went into the kitchen.
Claude sat still, listening to Enid's quick movements as she opened up the range to get supper. The light in the room grew greyer. Outside the fields melted into one another as evening came on. The young trees in the yard bent and whipped about under a bitter north wind. He had often thought with pride that winter died at his front doorstep; within, no draughty halls, no chilly corners. This was their second year here. When he was driving home, the thought that he might be free of this house for a long while had stirred a pleasant excitement in him; but now, he didn't want to leave it. Something grew soft in him. He wondered whether they couldn't try again, and make things go better. Enid was singing in the kitchen in a subdued, rather lonely voice. He rose and went out for his milking coat and pail. As he passed his wife by the window, he stopped and put his arm about her questioningly.
She looked up. "That's right. You're feeling better about it, aren't you? I thought you would. Gracious, what a smelly coat, Claude! I must find another for you."
Claude knew that tone. Enid never questioned the
When they sat down at the supper table in the back parlour an hour later, Enid looked worn, as if this time her decision had cost her something. "I should think you might have a restful winter at your mother's," she began cheerfully. "You won't have nearly so much to look after as you do here. We needn't disturb things in this house. I will take the silver down to Mother, and we can leave everything else just as it is. Would there be room for my car in your father's garage? You might find it a convenience."
"Oh, no! I won't need it. I'll put it up at the mill house," he answered with an effort at carelessness.
All the, familiar objects that stood about them in the
"In the, spring?" Claude looked up from his plate.
"Of course, Claude. I could hardly get back before next fall, if I'm to be of any help to poor Carrie. I might try to be home for harvest, if that would make it more
"Oh, don't hurry on my account!" he muttered, staring after her disappearing figure.
Enid came back with the hot pudding and the after-dinner coffee things. "This has come on us so suddenly that we must make our plans at once," she explained. "I should think your mother would be glad to keep Rose for us; she is such a good cow. And then you can have all the cream you want."
He took the little gold-rimmed cup she held out to him. "If you are going to be gone until next fall, I shall sell Rose," he announced gruffly.
"But why? You might look a long time before you found another like her."
"I shall sell her, anyhow. The horses, of course, are Father's; he paid for them. If you clear out, he may want to rent this place. You may find a tenant in here when you get back from China." Claude swallowed his coffee, put down the cup, and went into the front parlour, where he lit a cigar. He walked up and down, keeping his eyes fixed upon his wife, who still sat at the table in the circle of light from the hanging lamp. Her head, bent forward a little, showed the neat part of her brown hair. When she was perplexed, her face always looked sharper, her chin longer.
"If you've no feeling for the place," said Claude from the other room, "you can hardly expect me to hang around and take care of it. All the time you were campaigning, I played housekeeper here."
Enid's eyes narrowed, but she did not flush. Claude had never seen a wave of colour come over his wife's pale, smooth cheeks.
"Don't be childish. You know I care for this place; it's our home. But no feeling would be right that kept me from doing my duty. You are well and you have your mother's house to go to. Carrie is ill and among strangers."
She began to gather up the dishes. Claude stepped quickly out into the light and confronted her. "It's not only your going. You know what's the matter with me. It's because you want to go. You are glad of a chance to get away among all those preachers, with their smooth talk and make-believe."
Enid took up the tray. "If I am glad, it's because you are not willing to govern our lives by Christian ideals. There is something in you that rebels all the time. So many
She walked resolutely out of the room and shut the door behind her. Later, when she came back, Claude was not there. His hat and coat were gone from the hatrack; he must have let himself out quietly by the front door. Enid sat up until eleven and then went to bed.
In the morning, on coming out from her bedroom, she found Claude asleep on the lounge, dressed, with his overcoat on. She had a moment of terror and bent over him, but she could not detect any smell of spirits. She began preparations for breakfast, moving quietly.
Having once made up her mind to go out to her sister, Enid lost no time. She engaged passage and cabled the
One snowy day, when nobody was about, Claude took the big car and went over to his own place to close the house for the winter and bring away the canned fruit and vegetables left in the cellar. Enid had packed her best linen in her cedar chest and had put the kitchen and china closets in scrupulous order before she went away. He began covering the
How inherently mournful and ugly such objects were, when the feeling that had made them precious no longer existed! The debris of human life was more worthless and ugly than the dead and decaying things in nature. Rubbish . . . junk . . . his mind could not picture anything that so exposed and condemned all the dreary, weary, ever-repeated actions by which life is continued from day to day. Actions without meaning. . . . As he looked out and saw the grey landscape through the gently falling snow, he could not help thinking how much better it would be if people could go to sleep like the fields; could be blanketed down under the snow, to wake with their hurts healed and their defeats forgotten. He
At last he locked the door, put the key in his pocket, and went over to the timber claim to smoke a cigar and say was the matter with him? Why, at least, could he not stop feeling things, and hoping? What was there to hope for now?
He heard a sound of distress, and looking back, saw the barn cat, that had been left behind to pick up her living. She was standing inside the hedge, her jet black fur ruffled against the wet flakes, one paw lifted, mewing miserably. Claude went over and picked her up.
"What's the matter, Blackie? Mice getting scarce in the barn? Mahailey will say you are bad luck. Maybe you are, but you can't help it, can you?" He slipped her into his overcoat pocket. Later, when he was getting into his car, he tried to dislodge her and put her in a basket, but she clung to her nest in his pocket and dug her claws into the lining. He laughed. "Well, if you are bad luck, I guess you are going to stay right with me!"
She looked up at him with startled yellow eyes and did not even mew.
MRS. WHEELER was afraid that Claude might not find the old place comfortable, after having had a house of his own. She put her best rocking chair and a reading lamp in his bedroom. He often sat there all evening, shading his eyes with his hand, pretending to read. When he stayed downstairs after supper, his mother and Mahailey were grateful. Besides collecting war pictures, Mahailey now hunted through the old magazines in the attic for pictures of China. She had marked on her big kitchen calendar the day when Enid would arrive in Hong-Kong.
"Mr. Claude," she would say as she stood at the sink washing the supper dishes, "it's broad daylight over where Miss Enid is, ain't it? Cause the world's round, an' the old sun, he's a-shinin' over there for the yaller people."
From time to time, when they were working together, Mrs. Wheeler told Mahailey what she knew about the customs of the Chinese. The old woman had never had two impersonal interests at the same time before, and she scarcely knew what to do with them. She would murmur on, half to Claude and half to herself: "They ain't fightin' over there where Miss Enid is, is they? An' she won't have to wear their kind of clothes, cause she's a white woman. She won't let 'em kill their girl babies nor do such awful things like they always have, an' she won't let 'em pray to them stone iboles, cause they can't help 'em none. I 'spect Miss Enid'll do a heap of good, all the time."
Behind her diplomatic monologues, however, Mahailey had her own ideas, and she was greatly scandalized at Enid's departure. She was afraid people would say that Claude's wife had "run off an' lef' him," and in the Virginia mountains, where her social standards had been formed, a husband or wife thus deserted was the object of boisterous ridicule. She once stopped Mrs. Wheeler in a dark corner of the cellar to whisper, "Mr. Claude's wife ain't got to stay off there, like her sister, is she?"
If one of the Yoeder boys or Susie Dawson happened to be at the Wheelers' for dinner, Mahailey never failed to refer to Enid in a loud voice. "Mr. Claude's wife, she cuts her potatoes up raw in the pan an' fries 'em. She don't boil 'em first like I do. I know she's an awful good cook, I know she is." She felt that easy references to the absent wife made things look better.
Ernest Havel came to see Claude now, but not often. They both felt it would be indelicate to renew their former intimacy. Ernest still felt aggrieved about his beer, as if Enid had snatched the tankard from his lips with her own corrective hand. Like Leonard, he believed that Claude had made a bad bargain in matrimony; but instead of feeling sorry for him, Ernest wanted to see him convinced and punished. When he married Enid, Claude had been false to liberal principles, and it was only right that he should pay for his apostasy. The very first time he came to spend an evening at the Wheelers' after Claude came home to live, Ernest undertook to explain his objections to Prohibition. Claude shrugged his shoulders.
"Why not drop it? It's a matter that doesn't interest me, one way or the other."
Ernest was offended and did not come back for nearly a
He walked into the Wheelers' kitchen the night after this news reached the farming country, and found Claude and his mother sitting at the table, reading the papers aloud to each other in snatches. Ernest had scarcely taken a seat when the telephone bell rang. Claude answered the call.
"It's the telegraph operator at Frankfort," he said, as he hung up the receiver. "He repeated a message from Father, sent from Wray: Will be home day after tomorrow. Read the papers. What does he mean? What does he suppose we are doing?"
"It means he considers our situation very serious. It's not like him to telegraph except in case of illness." Mrs. Wheeler rose and walked distractedly to the telephone box, as if it might further disclose her husband's state of mind.
"But what a queer message! It was addressed to you, too, Mother, not to me."
"He would know how I feel about it. Some of your father's people were sea-going men, out of Portsmouth. He knows what it means when our shipping is told where it can go on the ocean, and where it cannot. It isn't possible that Washington can take such an affront for us. To think that at this time, of all times, we should have a Democratic
Claude laughed. "Sit down, Mother. Wait a day or two. Give them time."
"The war will be over before Washington can do anything, Mrs. Wheeler," Ernest declared gloomily, "England will be starved out, and France will be beaten to a standstill. The
Mrs. Wheeler stopped short in her restless pacing and met his moody glance. "I don't know anything, Ernest, but I believe the Bible. I believe that in the twinkling of an eye we shall be changed!"
Ernest looked at the floor. He respected faith. As he said, you must respect it or despise it, for there was nothing else to, do.
Claude sat leaning his elbows on the table. "It always comes back to the same thing, Mother. Even if a raw army could do anything, how would we get it over there? Here's one naval authority who says the Germans are turning out submarines at the rate of three a day. They probably didn't spring this on us until they had enough built to keep the ocean clean."
"I don't pretend to say what we could accomplish, son. But we must stand somewhere, morally. They have told us all along that we could be more helpful to the Allies out of the war than in it, because we could send munitions and supplies. If we agree to withdraw that aid, where are we? Helping Germany, all the time we are pretending to mind our own business! If our only alternative is to be at the bottom of the sea, we had better be there!"
"Mother, do sit down! We can't settle it tonight. I never saw you so worked up."
"Your father is worked up, too, or he would never have sent that telegram." Mrs. Wheeler reluctantly took up her workbasket, and the boys talked with their old, easy
When Ernest left, Claude walked as far as the Yoeders' place with him, and came back across the snow-drifted fields, under the frosty brilliance of the winter stars. As he looked up at them, he felt more than ever that they must have
Claude and his mother had not long to wait. Three days later they knew that the German ambassador had been dismissed, and the American ambassador recalled from Berlin. To older men these events were subjects to think and converse about; but to boys like Claude they were life and death, predestination.
0NE stormy morning Claude was driving the big wagon to town to get a load of lumber. The roads were beginning to thaw out, and the country was black and dirty looking. Here and there on the dark mud, grey snow crusts lingered, perforated like honeycomb, with wet weed-stalks sticking up through them. As the wagon creaked over the high ground just above Frankfort, Claude noticed a
He turned out of his way in order to pass the High School, drew up his team, and waited a few minutes until the noon bell rang. The older boys and girls came out first, with a flurry of raincoats and umbrellas. Presently he saw Gladys Farmer, in a yellow "slicker" and an oilskin hat, and waved to her. She came up to the wagon.
"I like your decoration," be said, glancing toward the cupola.
"It's a silk one the Senior boys bought with their athletic money. I advised them not to run it up in this rain, but the class president told me they bought that flag for storms."
"Get in, and I'll take you home."
She took his extended hand, put her foot on the hub of the wheel, and climbed to the seat beside him. He clucked to his team.
"So your High School boys are feeling war-like these days?"
"Very. What do you think?"
"I think they'll have a chance to express their feelings."
"Do you, Claude? It seems awfully unreal."
"Nothing else seems very real, either. I'm going to haul out a load of lumber, but I never expect to drive a nail in it. These things don't matter now. There is only one thing we ought to do, and only one thing that matters; we all know it."
"You feel it's coming nearer every day?"
"Every day."
Gladys made no reply. She only looked at him gravely with her calm, generous brown eyes. They stopped before the low house where the windows were full of flowers. She took his hand and swung herself to the ground, holding it for a moment while she said good-bye. Claude drove back to the lumber yard. In a place like Frankfort, a boy whose wife was in China could hardly go to see Gladys without making talk.
DURING the bleak month of March Mr. Wheeler went to town in his buckboard almost every day. For the first time in his life he had a secret anxiety. The one member of his family who had never given him the slightest trouble, his son Bayliss, was just now under a cloud.
Bayliss was a Pacifist, and kept telling people that if only the United States would stay out of this war, and gather up what Europe was wasting, she would soon be in actual possession of the capital of the world. There was a kind of logic in Bayliss' utterances that shook Nat Wheeler's imperturbable assumption that one point of view was as good as another. When Bayliss fought the dram and the cigarette, Wheeler only laughed. That a son of his should turn out a Prohibitionist, was a joke he could appreciate. But Bayliss' attitude in the present crisis disturbed him. Day after day he sat about his son's place of business, interrupting his arguments with funny stories. Bayliss did not go home at all that month. He said to his father, "No, Mother's too violent. I'd better not."
Claude and his mother read the papers in the evening, but they talked so little about what they read that Mahailey
Pictures of soldiers in gas-masks puzzled her; gas was
On the morning of the eighth of April Claude came
"Mr. Claude," Mahailey grumbled, "this stove ain't never drawed good like my old one Mr. Ralph took away from me. I can't do nothin' with it. Maybe you'll clean it out for me next Sunday."
"I'll clean it today, if you say so. I won't be here next Sunday. I'm going away."
Something in his tone made Mahailey get up, her eyes still blinking with the smoke, and look at him sharply. "You ain't goin' off there where Miss Enid is?" she asked anxiously.
"No, Mahailey." He had dropped the shoebrush and stood with one foot on the chair, his elbow on his knee, looking out of the window as if he had forgotten himself. "No, I'm not going to China. I'm going over to help fight the
He was still staring out at the wet fields. Before he could
"I knowed you would," she sobbed "I always knowed you would, you nice boy, you! Old Mahail' knowed!"
Her upturned face was working all over; her mouth, her eyebrows, even the wrinkles on her low forehead were working and twitching. Claude felt a tightening in his throat as he tenderly regarded that face; behind the pale eyes, under the low brow where there was not room for many thoughts, an idea was struggling and tormenting her. The same idea that had been tormenting him.
"You're all right Mahailey," he muttered, patting her back and turning away. "Now hurry breakfast."
"You ain't told your mudder yit?" she whispered.
"No, not yet. But she'll be all right, too." He caught up his cap and went down to the barn to look after the horses.
When Claude returned, the family were already at the break-fast table. He slipped into his seat and watched his mother while she drank her first cup of coffee. Then he addressed his father.
"Father, I don't see any use of waiting for the draft. If you can spare me, I'd like to get into a training camp
"I shouldn't wonder." Mr. Wheeler poured maple syrup on his pancakes with a liberal hand. "How do you feel about it, Evangeline?"
Mrs. Wheeler had quietly put down her knife and fork. She looked at her husband in vague alarm, while her fingers moved restlessly about over the tablecloth.
"I thought," Claude went on hastily, "that maybe I would go up to Omaha tomorrow and find out where the training camps
"No, I don't understand much about it either." Mr. Wheeler rolled his top pancake and conveyed it to his mouth. After a moment of mastication he said, "You figure on going
"I'd like to. I won't bother with baggage—some shirts and underclothes in my suitcase. If the Government wants me, it will clothe me."
Mr. Wheeler pushed back his plate. "Well, now I guess you'd better come out with me and look at the wheat. I don't know but I'd best plough up that south quarter and put it in corn. I don't believe it will make anything much."
When Claude and his father went out of the door, Dan sprang up with more alacrity than usual and plunged after them. He did not want to be left alone with Mrs. Wheeler. She remained sitting at the foot of the deserted breakfast table. She was not crying. Her eyes were utterly sightless. Her back was so stooped that she seemed to be bending under a burden. Mahailey cleared the dishes away quietly.
Out in the muddy fields Claude finished his talk with his father. He explained that he wanted to slip away without saying good-bye to any one. "I have a way, you know," be said, flushing, "of beginning things and not getting very far with them. I don't want anything said about this until I'm sure. I may be rejected for one reason or another."
Mr. Wheeler smiled. "I guess not. However, I'll tell Dan to keep his mouth shut. Will you just go over to Leonard Dawson's and get that wrench he borrowed? It's about noon, and he'll likely be at home."
Claude found big Leonard watering his team at the windmill. When Leonard asked him what he thought of the President's message, he blurted out at once that he was going to Omaha to enlist. Leonard reached up and pulled the lever that controlled the almost motionless wheel.
"Better wait a few weeks and I'll go with you. I'm going to try for the Marines. They take my eye."
Claude, standing on the edge of the tank, almost fell
Leonard looked him over. "Good Lord, Claude, you ain't the only fellow around here that wears pants! What for? Well, I'll tell you what for," he held up three large red fingers threateningly; "Belgium, the Lusitania, Edith Cavell. That dirt's got under my skin. I'll get my corn planted, and then Father'll look after Susie till I come back."
Claude took a long breath. "Well, Leonard, you fooled me. I believed all this chaff you've been giving me about not caring who chewed up who."
"And no more do I care," Leonard protested, "not a damn! But there's a limit. I've been ready to go since the Lusitania. I don't get any satisfaction out of my place any more. Susie feels the same way."
Claude looked at his big neighbour. "Well, I'm off
"Good luck, Claude. Maybe we'll meet in foreign parts. Wouldn't that be a joke! Give my love to Enid when you write. I always did think she was a fine girl, though I
0NE bright June day Mr. Wheeler parked his car in a line of motors before the new pressed-brick Court house in Frankfort. The Court house stood in an open square, surrounded by a grove of cotton-woods. The lawn was freshly cut, and the flower beds were blooming. When Mr. Wheeler entered the courtroom upstairs, it was already half-full of farmers and townspeople, talking in low tones while the summer flies buzzed in and out of the open windows. The judge, a one-armed man, with white hair and side-whiskers, sat at his desk, writing with his left hand. He was an old settler in Frankfort county, but from his
Oberlies owned a beautiful farm and lived in a big white house set on a hill, with a fine orchard, rows of beehives, barns, granaries, and poultry yards. He raised turkeys and tumbler-pigeons, and many geese and ducks swam about on his cattle ponds. He used to boast that he had six sons, "like our
Mr. Wheeler had come to town prepared to lend Yoeder a hand if he needed one. They had worked adjoining fields for thirty years now. He was surprised that his neighbour had got into trouble. He was not a blusterer, like Oberlies, but a big, quiet man, with a serious, large-featured face, and a stern mouth that seldom opened.. His countenance might have been cut out of red sandstone, it was so heavy and fixed. He and Oberlies sat on two wooden chairs outside the railing of the judge's desk.
Presently the judge stopped writing and said he would hear the charges against Troilus Oberlies. Several neighbours took the stand in succession; their complaints were confused and almost humorous. Oberlies had said the United States would be licked, and that would be a good thing; America was a great country, but it was run by fools, and to be governed by Germany was the best thing that could happen to it. The
Here the judge interrupted him. "Please confine yourself to statements which you consider disloyal, made in your
A second witness had heard Oberlies say he hoped the
When asked if he bad anything to say to these charges, the old man rose, threw back his shoulders, and cast a defiant glance. at the courtroom. "You may take my property and imprison me, but I explain nothing, and I take back nothing," he declared in a loud voice.
The judge regarded his inkwell with a smile. "You mistake the nature of this occasion, Mr. Oberlies. You are not asked to recant. You are merely asked to desist from further
Mr. Yoeder, a witness declared, had said he hoped the United States would go to Hell, now that it had been bought
When he was called upon, Yoeder rose and stood like a rock before the judge. "I have nothing to say. The charges are true. I thought this was a country where a man could speak his mind."
"Yes, a man can speak his mind, but even here he must take the consequences. Sit down, please." The judge leaned back in his chair, and looking at the two men in front of him, began with deliberation: "Mr. Oberlies, and Mr. Yoeder, you both know, and your friends and neighbours know, why you are here. You have not recognized the element of appropriateness, which must be regarded in nearly all the transactions of life; many of our civil laws are founded upon it. You have allowed a sentiment, noble in itself, to carry you away and lead you to make extravagant statements which I am confident neither of you mean. No man can demand that you cease from loving the country of your birth; but while you enjoy the benefits of this country, you should not defame its government to extol another. You both admit to utterances which I can only
After the case was concluded, Mr. Wheeler joined his neighbour at the door and they went downstairs together.
"Well, what do you hear from Claude?" Mr. Yoeder asked.
"He's still at Fort R—. He expects to get home on leave before he sails. Gus, you'll have to lend me one of your boys
"Yes, you can have any of my boys,— till the draft gets 'em," said Yoeder sourly.
"I wouldn't worry about it. A little military training is good for a boy. You fellows know that." Mr. Wheeler winked, and Yoeder's grim mouth twitched at one corner.
That evening at supper Mr. Wheeler gave his wife a full account of the court hearing, so that she could write it to Claude. Mrs. Wheeler, always more a school-teacher than a housekeeper, wrote a rapid, easy hand, and her long letters to Claude reported all the neighbourhood doings. Mr. Wheeler furnished much of the material for them. Like many long-married men he had fallen into the way of withholding neighbourhood news from his wife. But since Claude went away be reported to her everything in which he thought the boy would be interested. As she laconically said in one of her letters: "Your father talks a great deal more at home than formerly, and sometimes I think he is trying to take your place."
0N the first day of July Claude Wheeler found himself in the fast train from Omaha, going home for a week's leave. The uniform was still an unfamiliar sight in July, 1917. The first draft was not yet called, and the boys who had rushed off and enlisted were in training camps far away. Therefore a red-headed young man with long straight legs in puttees, and broad, energetic,
The country that rushed by him on each side of the track was more interesting to his trained eye than-the pages of any book. He was glad to be going through it at harvest—the season when it is most itself. He noted that there was more corn than usual,— much of the winter wheat had been weather-killed, and the fields were ploughed up in the spring and
Claude turned to the old man in the opposite seat. "When I see those fellows, I feel as if I'd wakened up in the wrong clothes."
His neighbour looked pleased and smiled. "That the kind of uniform you're accustomed to?"
"I surely never wore anything else in the month of July," Claude admitted. "When I find myself riding along in a train, in the middle of harvest, trying to learn French verbs, then I know the world is turned upside down, for a fact!"
The old man pressed a cigar upon him and began to question
him. Like the hero of the Odyssey upon his homeward
The old man wished him a pleasant visit home, and the best of luck in days to come. Every one in the car smiled at him as he stepped down to the platform with his suitcase in hand and his canvas bag in the other. His old friend, Mrs. Voigt, the German woman, stood out in front of her
Claude went into the lunch room and threw his bags on the floor. "What's the matter, Mrs. Voigt? Can I do anything for you?"
She was sitting on one of her own stools, crying piteously, her false frizzies awry. Looking up, she gave a little screech of recognition. "Oh, I tank Gott it was you, and no more trouble coming! You know I ain't no spy nor nodding, like what dem boys say. Dem young fellers is dreadful rough mit me. I sell dem candy since dey was babies, an' now dey turn on me like dis. Hindenburg, dey calls me, und Kaiser Bill" She began to cry again, twisting her stumpy little fingers as if she would tear them off.
"Give me some dinner, ma'am, and then I'll go and settle with that gang. I've been away for a long time, and it seemed like getting home when I got off the train and saw your squash vines running over the porch like they used to."
"Ya? You remember dat?" she wiped her eyes. "I got a pot-pie today, und green peas, chust a few, out of my own garden."
"Bring them along, please. We don't. get anything but canned stuff in camp."
Some railroad men came in for lunch. Mrs. Voigt beckoned Claude off to the end of the counter, where, after she had served her customers, she sat down and talked to him, in whispers.
"My, you look good in dem clothes," she said, patting his sleeve. "I can remember some wars, too; when we got back dem provinces that Napoleon took away from us, Alsace und
"Don't pay any attention to them. You don't have trouble with the business people here, do you?"
"No-o, not troubles, exactly." She hesitated, then leaned impulsively across the counter and spoke in his ear. "But it ain't all so bad in de Old Country like what dey say. De poor people ain't slaves, und dey ain't ground down like what dey say here. Always de forester let de poor folks come into de wood und carry off de limbs dat fall, und de dead trees. Und if de rich farmer have maybe a liddle more manure dan he need, he let de poor man come und take some for his land. De poor folks don't git such wages like here, but dey lives chust as comfortable. Und dem wooden shoes, what dey makes such fun of, is cleaner dan what leather is, to go round in de mud und manure. Dey don't git so wet und dey don't stink so."
Claude could see that her heart was bursting with
Claude would have liked to listen longer, but he wanted to find the old woman's tormentors before his train came in. Leaving his bags with her, he crossed the railroad tracks, guided by an occasional teasing tinkle of the bell in the
"Looking for any one, soldier?" asked the one with the bell.
"Yes, I am. I'm looking for that bell. You'll have to take it back where it belongs. You every one of you know there's no harm in that old woman."
"She's a German, and we're fighting the Germans, ain't we?"
"I don't think you'll ever fight any. You'd last about ten minutes in the American army. You're not our kind. There's only one army in the world that wants men who'll bully old women. You might get a job with them."
The boys giggled. Claude beckoned impatiently. "Come along with that bell, kid."
The boy rose slowly and climbed the bank out of the gully. As they tramped back through the cornfield, Claude turned to him abruptly. "See here, aren't you ashamed of yourself?"
"Oh, I don't know about that!" the boy replied airily,
"Well, you ought to be. I didn't expect to see anything of this kind until I got to the front. I'll be back here in a week, and I'll make it hot for anybody that's been bothering her." Claude's train was pulling in, and he ran for his baggage.
Once seated in the "cotton-tail," he began going down into his own country, where he knew every farm he passed,—knew the land even when he did not know the owner, what sort of crops it yielded, and about how much it was worth. He did not recognize these farms with the pleasure he had anticipated, because he was so angry about the indignities Mrs. Voigt had suffered. He was still burning with the first ardour of the enlisted man. He believed that he was going abroad with an expeditionary force that would make war without rage, with uncompromising generosity and chivalry.
Most of his friends at camp shared his Quixotic ideas. They had come together from farms and shops and mills and mines, boys from college and boys from tough joints in big cities; sheepherders, street car drivers, plumbers' assistants, billiard markers. Claude had seen hundreds of them when they first came in; "show men" in cheap, loud sport suits, ranch boys in knitted waistcoats, machinists with the grease still on their fingers, farm-hands like Dan, in their one Sunday coat. Some of them carried paper suitcases tied up with rope, some brought all they had in a blue handkerchief. But they all came to give and not to ask, and what they offered was just themselves; their big red hands, their strong backs, the steady, honest, modest look in their eyes. Sometimes, when he had helped the medical examiner, Claude had noticed the anxious expression in the faces of the long lines of waiting men. They seemed to say, "If I'm good enough, take me. I'll stay by." He found them like that to work with; serviceable, good-natured, and eager to learn. If they talked about the war, or the enemy they were getting ready to fight, it was usually in a facetious tone; they were going to "can the Kaiser," or to make the Crown Prince work for a living. Claude
The freight train swung into the river valley that meant home,— the place the mind always came back to, after its farthest quest. Rapidly the farms passed; the haystacks, the cornfields, the familiar red barns— then the long coal sheds and the water tank, and the train stopped.
On the platform he saw Ralph and Mr. Royce, waiting to welcome him. Over there, in the automobile, were his father and mother, Mr. Wheeler in the driver's seat. A line of motors stood along the siding. He was the first soldier who had come home, and some of the townspeople had driven down to see him arrive in his uniform. From one car Susie Dawson waved to him, and from another Gladys Farmer. While he stopped and spoke to them, Ralph took his bags.
"Come along, boys," Mr. Wheeler called, tooting his horn, and he hurried the soldier away, leaving only a cloud of dust behind.
Mr. Royce went over to old man Dawson's car and said rather childishly, "It can't be that Claude's grown taller? I suppose it's the way they learn to carry themselves. He always was a manly looking boy."
"I expect his mother's a proud woman," said Susie, very much excited. "It's too bad Enid can't be here to see him. She would never have gone away if she'd known all that was to happen."
Susie did not mean this as a thrust, but it took effect. Mr. Royce turned away and lit a cigar with some difficulty. His hands had grown very unsteady this last year, though he insisted that his general health was as good as ever. As he grew older, he was more depressed by the conviction that his
CAMP habits persisted. On his first morning at home Claude came downstairs before even Mahailey was stirring, and went out to have a look at the stock. The red sun came up just as he was going down the hill toward the cattle corral, and he had the pleasant feeling of being at home, on his father's land. Why was it so gratifying to be able to say "our hill," and "our creek down yonder"? to feel the crunch of this particular dried mud under his boots?
When be went into the barn to see the horses, the first creatures to meet his eye were the two big mules that had run away with him, standing in the stalls next the door. It flashed upon Claude that these muscular quadrupeds were the actual authors of his fate. If they bad not bolted with him and thrown him into the wire fence that morning, Enid would not have felt sorry for him and come to see him every day, and his life might have turned out differently. Perhaps if older people were a little more honest, and a boy were not taught to idealize in women the very qualities which can make him utterly unhappy— But there, he had got away from those regrets. But wasn't it just like him to be dragged into
He laughed as he looked at them. "You old devils, you're strong enough to play such tricks on green fellows for years to come. You're chock full of meanness!"
One of the animals wagged an ear and cleared his throat
At the end manger Claude found old Molly, the grey mare with the stiff leg, who had grown a second hoof on her off forefoot, an achievement not many horses could boast of. He was sure she recognized him; she nosed his hand and arm and turned back her upper lip, showing her worn, yellow teeth.
"Mustn't do that, Molly," he said as he stroked her. "A dog can laugh, but it makes a horse look foolish. Seems to me Dan might curry you about once a week!" He took a comb from its niche behind a joist and gave her old coat a rubbing. Her white bair was flecked all over with little rust-coloured dashes, like India ink put on with a fine brush, and her mane and tail had turned a greenish yellow. She must be eighteen years old, Claude reckoned, as he polished off her round, heavy haunches. He and Ralph used to ride her over. to the Yoeders' when they were barefoot youngsters, guiding her with a rope halter, and kicking at the leggy colt that was always running alongside.
When he entered the kitchen and asked Mahailey for warm water to wash his hands, she sniffed him disapprovingly.
"Why, Mr. Claude, you've been curryin' that old mare, and you've got white hairs all over your soldier-clothes. You're jist covered!"
If his uniform stirred feeling in people of sober judgment,
"Them leather leggins is to keep the briars from scratchin' you, ain't they? I 'spect there's an awful lot of briars over there, like them long blackberry vines in the fields in Virginia. Your mudder says the soldiers git lice now, like they done in our war. You jist carry a little bottle of coal-oil in your pocket an' rub it on your head at night. It keeps the nits from hatchin'."
Over the flour barrel in the corner Mahailey had tacked a Red Cross poster; a charcoal drawing of an old woman poking with a stick in a pile of plaster and twisted timbers that had once been her home. Claude went over to look at it while he dried his hands.
"Where did you get your picture?"
"She's over there where you're goin', Mr. Claude. There she is, huntin' for somethin' to cook with; no stove nor no dishes nor nothin'—everything all broke up. I reckon she'll be mighty glad to see you comin'."
Heavy footsteps sounded on the stairs, and Mahailey
After breakfast Mr. Wheeler took Claude out to the fields where Ralph was directing the harvesters. They watched the binder for a while, then went over to look at the haystacks and alfalfa, and walked along the edge of the cornfield, where they examined the young ears. Mr. Wheeler explained and exhibited the farm to Claude as if he were a stranger; the boy had a curious feeling of being now formally introduced to these acres on which he had worked every summer since he was big enough to carry water to the harvesters. His father told him how much land they owned, and how much it was worth, and that it was unencumbered except for a trifling mortgage he had given on one quarter when he took over the Colorado ranch.
"When you come back," he said, "you and Ralph won't have to hunt around to get into business. You'll both be well fixed. Now you'd better go home by old man Dawson's and drop in to see Susie. Everybody about here was astonished when Leonard went." He walked with Claude to the corner where the Dawson land met his own. "By the way," he said as he turned back, "don't forget to go in to see the Yoeders some-time. Gus is pretty sore since they had him up in court. Ask for the old grandmother. You remember she never learned any English. And now they've told her it's dangerous to talk German, she don't talk at all and hides away from everybody. If I go by early in the morning, when she's out weeding the garden, she runs and squats down in the
Claude decided he would go to the Yoeders' today, and to the Dawsons' tomorrow. He didn't like to think there might
As he walked on alone, Claude was thinking how this country that had once seemed little and dull to him, now seemed large and rich in variety. During the months in camp he had been wholly absorbed in new work and new friendships, and now his own neighbourhood came to him with the freshness of things that have been forgotten for a long while,—came together before his eyes as a harmonious whole. He was going away, and he would carry the whole countryside in his mind, meaning more to him than it ever had before. There was Lovely Creek, gurgling on down there, where he and Ernest used to sit and lament that the book of History was finished; that the world had come to avaricious old age and noble enterprise was dead for ever. But he was going away. . . .
That afternoon Claude spent with his mother. It was the first time she had had him to herself. Ralph wanted terribly to stay and hear his brother talk, but understanding how his mother felt, he went back to the wheat field. There was no
"I hardly see how we can bear the anxiety when our
Claude, sitting opposite his mother, wondered what it was about her hands that made them so different from any others he had ever seen. He had always known they were different, but now he must look closely and see why. They were slender, and always white, even when the nails were stained at
"How do you boys feel about it?"
Claude started. "About what, Mother? Oh, the tranportation! We don't worry about that. It's the
Mrs. Wheeler bent forward. "That must be boys' talk, Claude. Surely you don't believe such a thing could be practicable?"
"Absolutely. The British are depending on their aircraft designers to do just that, if everything else fails. Of course, nobody knows yet how effective the, submarines will be in our case."
Mrs. Wheeler again shaded her eyes with her hand. "When I was young, back in Vermont, I used to wish that I had lived in the old times when the world went ahead by leaps and bounds. And now, I feel as if my sight couldn't bear the glory that beats upon it. It seems as if we would have to be born with new faculties, to comprehend what is going on in the air and under the sea."
THE afternoon sun was pouring in at the back
He rose suddenly and said without apology: "Gladys, I wish I could feel sure you'd never marry my brother."
She did not reply, but sat in her easy chair, looking up at him with a strange kind of calmness.
"I know all the advantages," he went on hastily, "but they wouldn't make it up to you. That sort of a compromise would make you awfully unhappy. I know."
"I don't think I shall ever marry Bayliss." Gladys spoke in her usual low, round voice, but her quick breathing showed he
Claude turned away to the window. "A fine lot I've been to admire," he muttered.
"Well, it's true, anyway. It was like that when we went to High School, and it's kept up. Everything you do always seems exciting to me."
Claude felt a cold, perspiration on his forehead. He wished now that he had never come. "But that's it, Gladys. What
She came over to the window and stood beside him. "I don't know; perhaps it's by their blunders that one gets to know people,— by what they can't do. If you'd been like all the rest, you could have got on in their way. That was the one thing I couldn't have stood."
Claude was frowning out into the flaming garden. He had not heard a word of her reply. "Why didn't you keep me from making a fool of myself?" he asked in a low voice.
"I think I tried— once. Anyhow, it's all turning out better than I thought. You didn't get stuck here. You've found your place. You're sailing away. You've just begun."
"And what about you?"
She laughed softly. "Oh, I shall teach in the High School!"
Claude took her hands and they stood looking searchingly at each other in the swimming golden light that made
She stood there, exactly where he left her, and watched the
evening come on, not moving, scarcely breathing. She was
thinking how often, when she came downstairs, she would see
him standing here by the window, or moving about in the
dusky room, looking at last as he ought to look,— like his
SUNDAY was Claude's last day at home, and he took a long walk with Ernest and Ralph. Ernest would have preferred to lose Ralph, but when the boy was out of the harvest field he stuck to his brother like a burr. There was something about Claude's new clothes and new manner that fascinated him, and he went through one of those sudden changes of feeling that often occur in families.
On Monday morning Mrs. Wheeler wakened early, with a faintness in her chest. This was the day on which she must acquit herself well. Breakfast would be Claude's last meal at home. At eleven o'clock his father and Ralph would take him to Frankfort to catch the train. She was longer than usual in dressing. When she got downstairs Claude and Mahailey were already talking. He was shaving in the
"You tell 'em over there I'm awful sorry about them old women, with their dishes an' their stove all broke up."
"All right. I will." Claude scraped away at his chin.
She lingered. "Maybe you can help 'em mend their things, like you do mine fur me," she suggested hopefully.
"Maybe," he murmured absently.
Mrs. Wheeler opened the stair door, and Mahailey dodged back to the stove.
After breakfast Dan went out to the fields with the
Mrs. Wheeler kept throwing her apron over her head and
"No hurry. I'm just taking them down so they'll be ready."
Mrs. Wheeler ran after him, calling faintly, "Wait, Ralph! Are you sure he's got everything in? I didn't hear him
"Everything ready. He says he won't have to go upstairs again. He'll be along pretty soon. There's lots of time." Ralph shot down through the basement.
Mrs. Wheeler sat down in her reading chair. They wanted to keep her away, and it was a little selfish of them. Why couldn't they spend these last hours quietly in the house, instead of dashing in and out to frighten her? Now she could hear the hot water running the kitchen; probably Mr. Wheeler had come in to wash his hands. She felt really too weak to get up and go to the west window to see if he were still down at the garage. Waiting was now a matter of seconds, and her breath came short enough as it was.
She recognized a heavy, hob-nailed boot on the stairs, mounting quickly. When Claude entered, carrying his hat in his hand, she saw by his walk, his shoulders, and the way he held his head, that the moment had come, and that he meant to make it short. She rose, reaching toward him as he came up to her and caught her in his arms. She was smiling her little, curious intimate smile, with half-closed eyes.
"Well, is it good-bye?" she murmured. She passed her hands over his shoulders, down his strong back and the close-fitting sides of his coat, as if she were taking the mould and measure of his mortal frame. Her chin came just to his breast pocket, and she rubbed it against the heavy cloth. C1aude stood looking down at her without speaking a word. Suddenly his arms tightened and he almost crushed her.
"Mother!" he whispered as he kissed her. He ran
She struggled up from the chair where she had sunk and crept to the window; he was vaulting down the hill as fast as he could go. He jumped into the car beside his father. Ralph was already at the wheel, and Claude had scarcely touched the cushions when they were off. They ran down the creek and over the bridge, then up the long hill on the other side. As they neared the crest of the hill, Claude stood up in the car and looked back at the house, waving his cone-shaped hat. She leaned out and strained her sight, but her tears blurred everything. The brown, upright figure seemed to float out of the car and across the fields, and before he was actually gone, she lost him. She fell back against the window-sill, clutching her temples with both hands, and broke into choking, passionate speech. "Old eyes," she cried, "why do, you betray me? Why do you cheat me of my last sight of my splendid son!"
A LONG train of crowded cars, the passengers all of the same sex, almost of the same age, all dressed and hatted alike, was slowly steaming through the green
sea-meadows late on a summer afternoon. In the cars,
The conductor goes through the cars, saying something about a freight wreck on ahead; he has orders to wait here for half an hour. Nobody pays any attention to him. A murmur of astonishment rises from one side of the train. The boys crowd over to the south windows. At last there is something to look at,— though what they see is so strangely quiet that their own exclamations are not very loud.
Their train is lying beside an arm of the sea that reaches far into the green shore. At the edge of the still water stand the hulls of four wooden ships, in the process of building. There is no town, there are no smoke-stacks—very few workmen. Piles of lumber lie about on the grass. A gasoline engine under a temporary shelter is operating a long crane that reaches down among the piles of boards and beams, lifts a load, silently and deliberately swings it over to one of the skeleton vessels, and lowers it somewhere into the body of
Some of the men got out of the cars and ran along the tracks, asking each other how boats could be built off in the grass like this. Lieutenant Claude Wheeler stretched his legs upon the opposite seat and sat still at his window, looking down on this strange scene. Shipbuilding, he had supposed, meant noise and forges and engines and hosts of men. This was like a dream. Nothing but green meadows, soft grey water, a floating haze of mist a little rosy from the sinking sun, spectre-like seagulls, lying slowly, with the red glow
Claude knew nothing of ships or shipbuilding, but these craft did not seem to be nailed together,— they seemed all of a piece, like sculpture. They reminded him of the houses not made with hands; they were like simple and great thoughts, like purposes forming slowly here in the silence beside an unruffled arm of the Atlantic. He knew nothing about ships, but he didn't have to; the shape of those hulls-their strong, inevitable lines-told their story, was their story; told the whole adventure of man with the sea.
Wooden ships! When great passions and great aspirations stirred a country, shapes like these formed along its shores to be the sheath of its valour. Nothing Claude had ever seen or heard or read or thought had made it all so clear as these
The locomotive screeched to her scattered passengers, like an old turkey-hen calling her brood. The soldier boys came running-back along the embankment and leaped aboard the train. The conductor shouted they would be in Hoboken in time for supper.
Hoboken? How many of them were already in France!
IT was midnight when the men had got their supper and began unrolling their blankets. to sleep on the floor of the long dock waiting-rooms,— which in other days had been thronged by people who came to welcome home-coming friends, or to bid them God-speed to foreign shores. Claude and some of his men had tried to look about them: but there was little to be seen. The bow of a boat, painted in distracting patterns of black and white, rose at one end of the shed, but the water itself was not visible. Down in the cobble-paved street below they watched for awhile the long line of drays and motor trucks that bumped all night into a vast cavern lit by electricity, where crates and barrels and
He was called at four in the morning and told where to report to headquarters. Captain Maxey, stationed at a desk on one of the landings, explained to his lieutenants that their company was to sail at eight o'clock on the Anchises. It was an English boat, an old liner pulled off the Australian trade, that could carry only twenty-five hundred men. The crew was English, but part of the stores,— the meat and fresh fruit
The Company formed for roll-call at one end of the shed. with their packs and rifles. Breakfast was served to them while they waited. After an hour's standing on the concrete, they saw encouraging signs. Two gangplanks were lowered from the vessel at the end of the slip, and up each of them began to stream a close brown line of men in smart service caps. They recognized a company of Kansas Infantry, and began to grumble because their own service caps hadn't yet been given to them; they would have to sail in their old Stetsons. Soon they were drawn into one of the brown lines that went
By seven o'clock all the troops were aboard, and the men were allowed on deck. For the first time Claude saw the profile of New York City, rising thin and gray against an opal-coloured morning sky. The day had come on hot and misty.' The sun, though it was now high, was a red ball, streaked across with
A tug steamed up alongside and fastened. A man in a smart
"Let's get on the other side, near the rail if we can," said Fanning. "The fellows are bunching up over here because they want to look at the Goddess of Liberty as we go out. They to don't even know this boat turns around the minute she gets into the river. They think she's going over stern first!"
It was not easy to cross the deck; every inch was covered by a boot. The whole superstructure was coated with brown uniforms; they clung to the boat davits, the winches, the railings and ventilators, like bees in a swarm. Just as the vessel was backing out, a breeze sprang up and cleared the air. Blue sky broke overhead, and the pale silhouette of buildings on the long island grew sharp and hard. Windows flashed flame-coloured in their grey sides, the gold and bronze tops of towers began to gleam where the sunlight struggled through. The transport was sliding down toward the point, and to the left the eye caught the silver cobweb of bridges, seen confusingly against each other.
"There she is!" "Hello old girl!" "Good-bye, sweetheart!"
The swarm surged to starboard. They shouted and
A Staten Island ferry-boat passed close under the bow of the transport. The passengers were office-going people, on
As the troop ship glided down the sea lane, the old man still watched it from the turtle-back. That howling swarm of brown arms and hats and faces looked like nothing but a crowd of American boys going to a football game somewhere. But the scene was ageless; youths were sailing away to die for an idea, a sentiment, for the mere sound of a phrase . . . and on their departure they were making vows to a bronze image in the sea.
ALL the first morning Tod Fanning showed Claude over the boat,—not that Fanning had ever been on
The fourth occupant of number 96, Claude's cabin, had not turned up by noon, nor had any of his belongings, so the three who had settled their few effects there began to hope they would have the place to themselves. It would be crowded enough, at that. The third bunk was assigned to an officer. from the Kansas regiment, Lieutenant Bird, a Virginian, who had been working in his uncle's bank in Topeka when he enlisted. He and Claude sat together at mess. When they were at lunch, the Virginian said in his very gentle voice:
"Lieutenant, I wish you'd explain Lieutenant Fanning to me. He seems very immature. He's been telling me about a submarine destroyer he's invented, but it looks to me like foolishness."
Claude laughed. "Don't try to understand Fanning just let him sink in, and you'll come to like him. I used to wonder how he ever got a commission. You never can tell what crazy thing he'll do."
Fanning had, for instance, brought on board a pair of white flannel pants, his first and only tailor-made trousers, because,
At three o'clock there was a band concert on deck. Claude fell into talk with the bandmaster, and was delighted to find that he came from Hillport, Kansas, a town where Claude had once been with his father to buy cattle, and that all his fourteen men came from Hillport. They were the town band, had enlisted in a body, had gone into training together, and had never been separated. One was a printer who helped to get out the Hillport Argus every week, another clerked in a grocery store, another was the son of a German watch repairer, one was still in High School, one worked in an automobile livery. After supper Claude found them all together, very much interested in their first evening at sea, and arguing as to whether the sunset on the water was as fine as those they saw every night in Hillport. They hung together in a quiet, determined way, and if you began to talk to one, you soon found that all the others were there.
When Claude and Fanning and Lieutenant Bird were
Fanning, who slept under Claude, kicked the sagging mattress above him and stuck his head out. "Hullo, Wheeler! What have you got up there?"
"Nothing."
"Nothing smells pretty good to me. I'll have some with anybody that asks me."
No response from any quarter. Bird, the Virginian,
In the morning, when the bath steward came, he edged his way into the narrow cabin and poked his head into the berth over Bird's. "I'm sorry, sir, I've made careful search for your luggage, and it's not to be found, sir."
"I tell you it must be found," fumed a petulant voice
The steward smiled discreetly. He probably knew that the aviator had come on board in a state which precluded any very accurate observation on his part. "Very well, sir. Is there anything I can get you for the present?"
"You can take this shirt out and have it laundered and
"Yes sir."
Claude and Fanning got on deck as quickly as possible and found scores of their comrades already there, pointing to dark smudges of smoke along the clear horizon. They knew that these vessels had. come from unknown ports, some of them far away, steaming thither under orders known only to their commanders. They would all arrive within a few hours of each other at a given spot on the surface of the ocean. There they would fall into place, flanked by their destroyers, and would proceed in orderly formation, without changing their relative positions. Their escort would not leave them until they were joined by gunboats and destroyers off whatever coast they were bound for,— what that coast was, not even their own officers knew as yet.
Later in the morning this meeting was actually accomplished. There were ten troop ships, some of them very large boats, and six destroyers. The men stood about the whole morning, gazing spell bound at their sister transports, trying to find out their names, guessing at their capacity. Tanned as they
The Virginian joined them. "That Englishman ain't got
Claude was curious, and went down to the cabin. As he entered, the air-man, lying half-dressed in his upper berth, raised himself on one elbow and looked down at him. His blue eyes were contracted and hard, his curly hair disordered, but his cheeks were as pink as a girl's, and the little yellow humming-bird moustache on his upper lip was twisted sharp.
"You're missing fine weather," said Claude affably.
"Oh, there'll be a great deal of weather before we get over, and damned little of anything else!" He drew a bottle from under his pillow. "Have a nip?"
"I don't mind if I do," Claude put out his hand.
The other laughed and sank back on his pillow, drawling lazily, "Brave boy! Go ahead; drink to the Kaiser."
"Why to him in particular?"
"It's not particular. Drink to Hindenburg, or the High Command, or anything else that got you out of the cornfield. That's where they did get you, didn't they?"
"Well, it's a good guess, anyhow. Where did they get you?"
"Crystal Lake, Iowa. I think that was the place." He yawned and folded his hands over his stomach.
"Why, we thought you were an Englishman."
"Not quite. I've served in His Majesty's army two years, though."
"Have you been flying in France?"
"Yes. I've been back and forth all the time, England and France. Now I've wasted two months at Fort Worth. Instructor. That's not my line. I may have been sent over
Claude glanced up at him, shocked at such an idea.
The young man in the berth smiled with listless compassion.
"Oh, I don't mean Boche planes! There are dangers and dangers. You'll find you got bloody little information about this war, where they trained you. They don't communicate any details of importance. Going?"
Claude hadn't intended to, but at this suggestion he pulled back the door.
"One moment," called the aviator. "Can't you keep that long-legged ass who bunks under you quiet?"
"Fanning? He's a good kid. What's the matter with him?"
"His general ignorance and his insufferably familiar tone," snapped the other as he turned over.
Claude found Fanning and the Virginian playing checkers, and told them that the mysterious air-man was a fellow
"Pshaw!" exclaimed Lieutenant Bird.
"He can't put on airs with me, after that," Fanning declared. "Crystal Lake! Why it's no town at all!"
All the same, Claude wanted to find out how a youth from Crystal Lake ever became a member of the Royal Flying Corps. Already, from among the hundreds of strangers, half-a-dozen stood out as men be was determined to know better. Taking them altogether the men were a fine sight as they lounged about the decks in the sunlight, the petty rivalries and jealousies of camp days forgotten. Their youth seemed to flow together, like their brown uniforms. Seen in the mass like this, Claude thought, they were rather noble looking fellows. In so many of the faces there was a look of fine
There was on board a solitary Marine, with the stripes of Border service on his coat. He had been sick in the Navy Hospital in Brooklyn when his regiment sailed, and was now going over to join it. He was a young fellow, rather pale from his recent illness, but he was exactly Claude's idea of what a soldier ought to look like. His eye followed the Marine about all day.
The young man's name was Albert Usher, and be came from a little town up in the Wind River mountains, in Wyoming, where he had worked in a logging camp. He told Claude these facts when they found themselves standing side by side that evening, watching the broad purple sun go down into a violet coloured sea.
It was the hour when the farmers at home drive their teams in after the day's work. Claude was thinking how his mother would be standing at the west window every evening now, watching the sun go down and following him in her mind. When the young Marine came up and joined him, he confessed to a pang of homesickness.
"That's a kind of sickness I don't have to wrastle with," said Albert Usher. "I was left an orphan on a lonesome ranch, when I was nine, and I've looked out for myself ever since."
Claude glanced sidewise at the boy's handsome head, that came up from his neck with clean, strong lines, and thought he had done a pretty good job for himself. He could not have said exactly what it was he liked about young Usher's face, but it seemed to him a face that had gone through things,—that had been trained down like his body, and had developed a definite character. What Claude thought due to a manly,
When questioned, the Marine went on to say that though he had no home of his own, he had always happened to fall on his feet, among kind people. He could go back to any house in Pinedale or Du Bois and be welcomed like a son.
"I suppose there are kind women everywhere," he said, "but in that respect Wyoming's got the rest of the world beat. I never felt the lack of a home. Now the U. S.
"Were you at Vera Cruz?" Claude asked.
"I guess! We thought that was quite a little party at the time, but I suppose it will seem small potatoes when we get over there. I'm figuring on seeing some first-rate scrapping. How long have you been in the army?"
"Year ago last April. I've had hard luck about getting over. They kept me jumping about to train men."
"Then yours is all to come. Are you a college graduate?"
"No. I went away to school, but I didn't finish."
Usher frowned at the gilded path on the water where the sun lay half-submerged, like a big, watchful eye, closing. "I always wanted to go to college, but I never managed it. A man in Laramie offered to stake me to a course in the
"No. I know a few words, but I can't put them together."
"Same here. I expect to pick up some. I pinched quite a little Spanish down on the Border."
By this time the sun had disappeared, and all over the west the yellow sky came down evenly, like a gold curtain, on the still sea that seemed to have solidified into a slab of dark blue stone,—not a twinkle on its immobile surface. Across its dusky smoothness were two long smears of pale green, like a robin's egg.
"Do you like the water?" Usher asked, in the tone of a polite host. "When I first shipped on a cruiser I was crazy about it. I still am. But, you know, I like them old bald mountains back in Wyoming, too. There's waterfalls you can see twenty miles off from the plains; they look like white sheets or something, hanging up there on the cliffs. And down in the pine woods, in the cold streams, there's trout as long as my fore-arm."
That evening Claude was on deck, almost alone; there was a concert down in the ward room. To the west heavy clouds had come up, moving so low that they flapped over the water like a black washing hanging on the line.
The music sounded well from below. Four Swedish boys from the Scandinavian settlement at Lindsborg, Kansas, were singing "Long, Long Ago." Claude listened from a sheltered spot in the stern. What were they, and what was he, doing here on the Atlantic? Two years ago he had seemed a fellow for whom life was over; driven into the ground like a post, or like those Chinese criminals who are planted upright in the earth, with only their heads left out for birds to peck at and insects to sting. All his comrades had been tucked away in prairie towns, with their little jobs and their little plans. Yet here they were, attended by unknown ships called in from the four quarters of the earth. How had they come to be worth the watchfulness and devotion of so many men and
"Out of these stones can my Father raise up seed unto Abraham."
Downstairs the men began singing "Annie Laurie." Where were those summer evenings when he used to sit dumb by the windmill, wondering what to do with his life?
THE morning of the third day; Claude and the Anchises mount the fresh-blowing hills of water, her prow, as it rose and fell, always a dull triangle against the glitter. Their escorts looked like dream ships, soft and iridescent as shell in the pearl-coloured tints of the morning. Only the dark smudges of smoke told that they were mechanical realities with stokers and engines.
While the three stood there, a sergeant brought Claude word that two of his men would have to report at sick-call. Corporal Tannhauser had had such an attack of nose-bleed during the night that the sergeant thought he might die, before they got it stopped. Tannhauser was up now, and in the breakfast line, but the Sergeant was sure he ought not to be. This Fritz Tannhauser was the tallest man in the
Medical inspection took a long while that morning. There seemed to be an outbreak of sickness on board. When Claude brought his two men up to the Doctor, he told them to go below and get into bed. As they left he turned to Claude.
"Give them hot tea, and pile army blankets on them. Make them sweat if you can."
Claude remarked that the hold wasn't a very cheerful place for sick men.
"I know that, Lieutenant, but there are a number of sick men this morning, and the only other physician on board is the sickest of the lot. There's the ship's doctor, of course, but he's only responsible for the crew, and so far he doesn't seem interested. I've got to overhaul the hospital and the
"Is there an epidemic of some sort?"
"Well, I hope not. But I'll have plenty to do today, so I count on you to look after those two." The Doctor was a New Englander who had joined them at Hoboken. He was a brisk, trim man, with piercing eyes, clean-cut features, and grey hair just the colour of his pale face. Claude felt at once that be knew his business, and he went below to carry out
When he came up from the hold, he saw the aviator —whose name, he had learned, was Victor Morse — smoking by the rail. This cabin-mate still piqued his curiosity.
"First time you've been up, isn't it?"
The aviator was looking at the distant smoke plumes over the quivering, bright water. "Time enough. I wish I knew where we are heading for. It will be awfully awkward for me if we make a French port."
"I thought you said you were to report in France."
"I am. But I want to report in London first." He
Claude had seen a captured crane, tied by its leg to a hencoop, behave exactly like that among Mahailey's chickens; hold its wings to its sides, and move its head about quickly and glare.
"I suppose you have friends in London?" he asked.
"Rather!" the aviator, replied with feeling.
"Do you like it better than Paris?"
"I shouldn't imagine anything was much better than London. I've not been in Paris; always went home when I was on leave. They work us pretty hard. In the infantry and artillery our men get only a fortnight off in twelve months. I understand the Americans have leased the Riviera,—recuperated at Nice and Monte Carlo. The only Cook's tour we had was Gallipoli," he added grimly.
Victor had gone a good way toward acquiring an English accent, the boys thought. At least he said 'necess'ry' and 'dysent'ry' and called his suspenders 'braces.' He offered Claude a cigarette, remarking that his cigars were in his lost trunk.
"Take one of mine. My brother sent me two boxes just before we sailed. I'll put a box in your bunk next time I go down. They're good ones."
The young man turned and looked him over with surprise. "I say, that's very decent of you! Yes, thank you, I will."
Claude had tried yesterday, when he lent Victor some shirts, to make him talk about his aerial adventures, but upon that subject he was as close as a clam. He admitted that the long red scar on his upper arm had been drilled by a sharpshooter from a German Fokker, but added hurriedly that it was of no consequence, as he had made a good landing. Now, on the strength of the cigars, Claude thought he would probe a little further. He asked whether, there was anything
"You get all the loot when you bring down a machine, do you?" Claude asked encouragingly.
"Of course. I've a good collection; altimeters and compasses and glasses. This lens I always carry with me, because I'm afraid to leave it anywhere."
"I suppose it makes a fellow feel pretty fine to bring down one of those German planes."
"Sometimes. I brought down one too many, though; it was very unpleasant." Victor paused, frowning. But Claude's open, credulous face was too much for his reserve. "I brought down a woman once. She was a plucky devil, flew a
"I'd like it well enough if we were."
Victor shrugged. "I should hope so!" He turned his chin in Claude's direction. "See here, if you like, I'll show you London! It's a promise. Americans never see it, you know. They sit in a Y hut and write to their Pollyannas, or they go
His listener laughed. "No, I want to see life, as they say."
"Umph! I'd like to set you down in some places I can think of. Very well, I invite you to dine with me at the Savoy, the first night we're in London. The curtain will rise on this world for you. Nobody admitted who isn't in evening dress. The jewels will dazzle you. Actresses, duchesses, all the handsomest women in Europe."
"But I thought London was dark and gloomy since the war."
Victor smiled and teased his small straw-coloured moustache with his thumb and middle finger. "There are a few bright spots left, thank you!" He began to explain to a novice what life at the front was really like. Nobody who had seen service talked about the war, or thought about it; it was merely a condition under which they lived. Men talked about the particular regiment they were jealous, of, or the favoured division that was put in for all the show fighting. Everybody thought about his own game, his personal life that he managed to keep going in spite of discipline; his next leave' how to get champagne without paying for it, dodging the guard, getting into scrapes with women and getting out again. "Are you quick with your French?" he asked.
Claude grinned. "Not especially."
"You'd better brush up on it if you want to do anything with French girls. I hear your M. P.'s are very strict. You must be able to toss the word the minute you see a skirt, and make your date before the guard gets onto you."
I suppose French girls haven't any scruples?" Claude
Victor shrugged his narrow shoulders. "I haven't found
When Victor was in the middle of a tale of amorous
Fanning looked after him with disgust. "Do you believe him? I don't think he's any such heart-smasher. I like his nerve, calling you 'Leftenant'! When he speaks to me he'll have to say Lootenant, or I'll spoil his beauty."
That day the men remembered long afterward, for it was the end of the fine weather, and of those first long, care-free days at sea. In the afternoon Claude and the young Marine, the Virginian and Fanning, sat together in the sun watching the water scoop itself out in hollows and pile itself up in blue, rolling hills. Usher was telling his companions a long story about the landing of the Marines at Vera Cruz.
"It's a great old town," he concluded. "One thing there I'll never forget. Some of the natives took a few of us out to the old prison that stands on a rock in the sea. We put in the whole day there, and it wasn't any tourist show, believe me! We went down into dungeons underneath the water, where they used to keep state prisoners, kept them buried alive for years. We saw all the old instruments of torture; rusty iron cages where a man couldn't lie down or stand up, but had to sit bent over till he grew crooked. It made you feel
THAT night the Virginian, who berthed under Victor Morse, had an alarming attack of nose-bleed, and by morning he was so weak that he bad to be carried to the hospital. The Doctor said they might as well face the facts; a scourge of influenza had broken out on board, of a peculiarly bloody and malignant type.*
Lieutenant Bird died late in the afternoon and was buried at sunrise the next day, sewed up in a tarpaulin, with an eighteen pound shell at his feet. The morning broke
The glittering walls of water kept rolling in, indigo, purple,
The whole ocean seemed suddenly to have come to life, the waves had a malignant, graceful, muscular energy, were animated by a kind of mocking cruelty. Only a few hours ago a gentle boy had been thrown into that freezing water and forgotten. Yes, already forgotten; every one had his own miseries to think about.
Late in the afternoon the wind fell, and there was a sinister sunset. Across the red west a small, ragged black cloud hurried,—then another, and another. They came up out of the sea—wild, witchlike shapes that travelled fast and met in the west as if summoned for an evil conclave. They hung there against the afterglow, distinct black shapes, drawing together, devising something. The few men who were left on deck felt that no good could come out of a sky like that. They wished they were at home, in France, anywhere but here.
THE next morning Doctor Trueman asked Claude to help him at sick call. "I've got a bunch of
The Doctor stood on deck in his raincoat, his foot on the rail to keep his equilibrium, writing on his knee as the long string of men came up to him. There were more than seventy in the line that morning, and some of them looked as if they ought to be in a drier place. Rain beat down on the sea like lead bullets. The old Anchises floundered from one grey ridge to another, quite alone. Fog cut off the cheering sight of the sister ships. The Doctor had to leave his post from time to time, when seasickness got the better of his will. Claude, at his elbow, was noting down names and temperatures. In the middle of his work he told the sergeants to manage without him for a few minutes. Down near the end of the line he had seen one of his own men misconducting himself, snivelling and crying like a baby,— a fine husky boy of eighteen who had never given any trouble. Claude made a dash for him. and clapped him on the shoulder.
"If you can't stop that, Bert Fuller, get where you won't be seen. I don't want all these English stewards standing around to watch an American soldier cry. I never heard of such a thing!"
"I can't help it, Lieutenant," the boy blubbered. "I've kept it back just as long as I can. I can't hold in any longer!"
"What's the matter with you? Come over here and sit down on this box and tell me."
Private Fuller willingly let himself be led, and dropped on the box. "I'm so sick, Lieutenant!"
"I'll see how sick you are." Claude stuck a thermometer into his mouth, and while he waited, sent the deck steward to bring a cup of tea. "Just as I thought, Fuller. You've not half a degree of fever. You're scared, and that's all. Now drink this tea. I expect you didn't eat any breakfast."
"No, sir. I can't eat the awful stuff on this boat."
"It is pretty bad. Where are you from?"
"I'm from P-P-Pleasantville, up on the P-P-Platte," the boy gulped, and his tears began to flow afresh.
"Well, now, what would they think of you, back there? I suppose they got the band out and made a fuss over you when you went away, and thought they were sending off a fine soldier. And I've always thought you'd be a first-rate soldier. I guess we'll forget about this. You feel better already, don't you ?"
"Yes, sir. This tastes awful good. I've been so sick to my stomach, and last night I got pains in my chest. All my crowd is sick, and you took big Tannhauser, I mean Corporal, away to the hospital. It looks like we're all going to die out here."
"I know it's a little gloomy. But don't you shame me before these English stewards."
"I won't do it again, sir," he promised.
When the medical inspection was over, Claude took the Doctor down to see Fanning, who had been coughing and
"What can you do for him, Doctor?"
"You see how I'm fixed; close onto two hundred men sick, and one doctor. The medical supplies are wholly inadequate. There's not castor oil enough on this boat to keep the men clean inside. I'm using my own drugs, but they won't last through an epidemic like this. I can't do much for
Claude found Victor Morse and told him he had better get a berth in one of the other staterooms. When Victor left with his belongings, Fanning stared after him. "Is he going?"
"Yes. It's too crowded in here, if you've got to stay in bed."
"Glad of it. His stories are too raw for me. I'm no sissy, but that fellow's a regular Don Quixote."
Claude laughed. "You mustn't talk. It makes you cough."
"Where's the Virginian?"
"Who, Bird?" Claude asked in astonishment,— Fanning had stood beside him at Bird's funeral. "Oh, he's gone, too. You sleep if you can."
After dinner Doctor Trueman came in and showed Claude how to give his patient an alcohol bath. "It's simply a
As there were no nurses on board, the Kansas band had taken over the hospital. They bad been trained for stretcher and first aid work, and when they realized what was Anchises, the bandmaster came to the Doctor and offered the services of his men. He chose nurses and
When Claude went to see his Corporal, big Tannhauser did
not recognize him. He was quite out of his head and was
conversing with his own family in the language of his early childhood.
The Kansas boys had singled him out for special
attention. The mere fact that he kept talking in a tongue
From the hospital Claude went down into the hold, where half-a-dozen of his company were lying ill. The hold was damp and musty as an old cellar, so steeped in the smells and leakage of innumerable dirty cargoes that it could not be made or kept clean. There was almost no ventilation, and the air was fetid with sickness and sweat and vomit. Two of the band boys were working in the stench and dirt, helping the stewards. Claude stayed to lend a hand until it was time to give Fanning his nourishment. He began to see that the wrist watch, which he had hitherto despised as effeminate and had
That night when the Doctor came in to see Fanning, he threw his stethoscope on the bed and said wearily, "It's a wonder that instrument doesn't take root in my ears and grow there." He sat down and sucked his thermometer for a few minutes, then held it out for inspection. Claude looked at it and told him he ought to go to bed.
"Then who's to be up and around? No bed for me,
Claude asked why the ship's doctor didn't do anything and added that he must be as little as he looked.
"Chessup? No, he's not half bad when you get to know him. He's given me a lot of help about preparing medicines, and it's a great assistance to talk the cases over with him. He'll do anything for me except directly handle the patients. He doesn't want to exceed his authority. It seems the English marine is very particular about such things. He's a Canadian, and he graduated first in his class at Edinburgh. I gather he was frozen out in private practice. You see, his appearance is against him. It's an awful handicap to look like a kid and be as shy as he is."
The Doctor rose, shored up his shoulders and took his bag. "You're looking fine yourself, Lieutenant," he remarked.
"Parents both living? Were they quite young when you were born? Well, then their parents were, probably. I'm a crank about that. Yes, I'll get my bath pretty soon, and I will lie down for an hour or two. With those splendid band boys running the hospital, I get a little lee-way."
Claude wondered how the Doctor kept going. He knew he hadn't had more than four hours sleep out of the last forty-eight, and he was not a man of rugged constitution. His bath steward was, as he said, his comfort. Hawkins was an old fellow who had held better positions on better boats,—yes, in better times, too. He had first gone to sea as a bath steward, and now, through the fortunes of war, he had come back where he began,— not a good place for an old man. His back was bent meekly, and he shuffled along with broken arches. He looked after the comfort of all the officers, and attended the doctor like a valet; got out his clean linen, persuaded him to lie down and have a hot drink after his bath, stood on guard at his door to take messages for him in the short hours when he was resting. Hawkins had lost two sons in the war and he seemed to find a solemn consolation in being of service to soldiers. "Take it a bit easy now, sir. You'll 'ave it 'ard enough over there," he used to say to one and another.
At eleven o'clock one of the Kansas men came to tell Claude that his Corporal was going fast. Big Tannhauser's fever had left him, but so had everything else. He lay in a stupor. His congested eyeballs were rolled back in his head and only the yellowish whites were visible. His mouth was open and his tongue hung out at one side. From the end of the corridor Claude had heard the frightful sounds that came from his throat, sounds like violent vomiting, or the choking rattle of a man in strangulation,—and, indeed, he was being strangled.
One of the band boys brought Claude a camp chair, and said kindly, "He doesn't suffer. It's mechanical now. He'd go easier if he hadn't so much vitality. The Doctor says he may have a few moments of consciousness just at the last, if you want to stay."
"I'll go down and give my private patient his egg, and then I'll come back." Claude went away and returned, and sat dozing by the bed. After three o'clock the noise of struggle ceased; instantly the huge figure on the bed became again his good-natured corporal. The mouth closed, the glassy jellies were once more seeing, intelligent human eyes. The face lost its swollen, brutish look and was again the face of a friend. It was almost unbelievable that anything so far gone could come back. He looked up wistfully at his Lieutenant as if to ask him something. His eyes filled with tears, and he turned his head away a little.
"
!" he whispered distinctly.
A few moments later he died in perfect dignity, not struggling under torture, but consciously, it seemed to Claude,— like a brave boy giving back what was not his to keep.
Claude returned to his cabin, roused Fanning once more, and then threw himself upon his tipping bunk. The boat seemed, to wallow and sprawl in the waves, as he had seen animals do on the farm when they gave birth to young. How helpless the old vessel was out here in the pounding seas, and how much misery she carried! He lay looking up at the, rusty water pipes and unpainted joinings. This liner was in truth the "Old Anchises"; even the carpenters who made her over for the service had not thought her worth the trouble, and had done their worst by her. The new partitions were hung to the joists by a few nails.
Big Tannhauser had been one of those who were most anxious to sail. He used to grin and say, "France is the only climate that's healthy for a man with a name like mine." He had waved his good-bye to the image in the New York
When Tannhauser first came to camp he was confused all the time, and couldn't remember instructions. Claude had once stepped him out in front of the line and reprimanded him for not knowing his right side from his left. When he looked into the case, he found that the fellow was not eating anything, that he was ill from homesickness. He was one of those farmer boys who are afraid of town. The giant baby of a long family, he had never slept away from home a night in his life before he enlisted.
Corporal Tannhauser, along with four others, was buried at sunrise. No band this time; the Chaplain was ill, so one of the young captains read the service. Claude stood by watching until the sailors shot one sack, longer by half a foot than the other four, into a lead-coloured chasm in the sea. There was not even a splash. After breakfast one of the Kansas orderlies called him into a little cabin where they had prepared the dead men for burial. The Army
Claude took up the photographs that had belonged to his
"I'll take these," he said. "And the others—just pitch them over, don't you think?"
B COMPANY'S first officer, Captain Maxey, was so
Claude had known Harris Maxey slightly in Lincoln; had met him at the Erlichs' and afterward kept up a campus acquaintance with him. He hadn't liked Maxey then, and he didn't like him now, but he thought him a good officer. Maxey's family were poor folk from Mississippi, who had settled in Nemaha county, and he was very ambitious, not only to get on in the world, but, as he said, to "be somebody." His life at the University was a feverish pursuit of social
Claude seemed to himself to be leading a double life these days. When he was working over Fanning, or was down in the hold helping to take care of the sick soldiers, he had no time to think,—did mechanically the next thing that came to hand. But when he had an hour to himself on deck, the tingling
Anchises he seemed to begin where
There was plenty of deck room, now that so many men were ill either from
sea-sickness or the epidemic, and
On the day of Tannhauser's funeral he went into the
"Very much. I think I'll have another. It's agreeable to be warm inside."
"Two more, Steward, and bring me some fresh lemon." The occupants of the room were either reading or talking in low tones. One of the Swedish boys was playing softly on the old piano. Victor began to pour the tea. He had a neat way of doing it, and today he was especially solicitous. "This Scotch mist gets into one's bones, doesn't it? I thought you were looking rather seedy when I passed you on deck."
"I was up with Tannhauser last night. Didn't get more than an hour's sleep," Claude murmured, yawning.
"Yes, I heard you lost your big corporal. I'm sorry. I've had bad news,
too. It's out now that we're to make a French port. That dashes all my
plans. However, !" He pushed back his cup with a shrug.
"Take a turn
Claude had often wondered why Victor liked him, since he was so little Victor's kind. "If it isn't a secret," he said, "I'd like to know how you ever got into the British army, anyway."
As they walked up and down in the rain, Victor told his
"You'll never go home again," Claude said with conviction. "I don't see you settling down in any little Iowa town."
"In the air service," said Victor carelessly, "we don't
"Let me see that a minute, will you? I've often admired it. A present from somebody you like, isn't it?"
A twitch of feeling, something quite genuine, passed over the air-man's
boyish face, and his rather small red mouth compressed sharply. "Yes,
a woman I want you to meet. Here," twitching his chin over his high
collar, "I'll write
Claude thanked him and put the card in his pocketbook, while Victor lit a cigarette. "I haven't forgotten that you're dining with us at the Savoy, if we happen in London together. If I'm there, you can always find me. Her address is mine. It will really be a great thing for you to meet a woman like Maisie. She'll be nice to you, because you're my friend." He went on to say that she had done everything in the world for him; had left her husband and given up her friends on his account. She now had a studio flat in Chelsea, where she simply waited his coming and dreaded his going. It was an awful life for her. She entertained other officers, of course, old acquaintances; but it was all camouflage. He was the man.
Victor went so far as to produce her picture, and Claude gazed without
knowing what to say at a large moon-shaped face with heavy-lidded,
weary eyes,— the neck clasped by a pearl collar, the shoulders bare to
the matronly swell of the bosom. There was not a line or wrinkle in the,
smooth ! Had
"Women like her simply don't exist in your part of the world," the aviator murmured, as he snapped the photograph
Claude laughed. "I don't know that I agree with you, but I like to hear you talk."
"Well; in that part of France that's all shot to pieces, you'll find more life going on in the cellars than in your home, town, wherever that is. I'd rather be a stevedore in the
"Yes, things are pretty tame at home," the other admitted.
"Tame? My God, it's death in life! What's left of men if you take all the fire out of them? They're afraid of everything. I know them; Sunday-school sneaks, prowling around those little towns after dark!" Victor abruptly
When Claude presented the piece of blue paper to Doctor Trueman, he smiled contemptuously. "I see; this has been filled by a London chemist. No, we have nothing of this sort." He handed it back. "Those things are only palliatives. If your friend wants that, he needs treatment— and he knows where he can get it."
Claude returned the slip of paper to Victor as they left the
"Sorry," said Victor, flushing haughtily. "Thank you so much!"
TOD FANNING held out better than many of the stronger men; his vitality surprised the doctor. The death list was steadily growing; and the worst of it was that patients died who were not very sick. Vigorous, clean-blooded young fellows of nineteen and twenty turned over and died because they had lost their courage, because other
"Do you know, Wheeler," the doctor remarked one day when they came up from the hospital together to get a breath of air, "I sometimes wonder whether all these inoculations they've been having, against typhoid and smallpox and what-not, haven't lowered their vitality. I'll go off my head if I keep losing men! What would you give to be out of it all, and safe back on the farm?" Hearing no reply, he turned his head, peered over his raincoat collar, and saw a startled, resisting look in the young man's blue eyes, followed by a quick flush.
"You don't want to be back on the farm, do you! Not a little bit! Well, well; that's what it is to be young!" He shook his head with a smile which might have been
Claude stayed where he was, drawing the wet grey air into his lungs and feeling vexed and reprimanded. It was quite
Only on that one day, the cold day of the Virginian's
Something was released that had been struggling for a long while, he told
himself. He had been due in France since the first battle of the Marne; he
had followed false leads and lost precious time and seen misery enough, but
he was on the right road at last, and nothing could stop him. If he hadn't
been so green, so bashful, so afraid of showing what he felt, and so stupid
at finding his way about, he would have enlisted in
Well, that was not "the Wheelers' way." The Wheelers were terribly afraid
of poking themselves in where they weren't wanted, of pushing their way
into a crowd where they didn't belong. And they were even more afraid of
doing
But the miracle had happened; a miracle so wide in its amplitude that the Wheelers,— all the Wheelers and the roughnecks and the low-brows were caught up in it. Yes, it was the rough-necks' own miracle, all this; it was their golden chance. He was in on it, and nothing could hinder or discourage him unless he were put over the side himself—which was only a way of joking, for that was a possibility he never seriously considered. The feeling of purpose, of fateful purpose, was strong in his breast.
LOOK at this, Doctor!" Claude caught Dr Trueman on his way from breakfast and handed him a written notice, signed D. T. Micks, Chief Steward. It stated that no more eggs or oranges could be furnished to patients, as the. supply was exhausted.
The doctor squinted at the paper. "I'm afraid that's your patient's death warrant. You'll never be able to keep him going on anything else. Why don't you go and talk it over with Chessup? He's a resourceful fellow. I'll join you there in a few minutes."
Claude had often been to Doctor Chessup's cabin since the epidemic broke out,— rather liked to wait there when he went
for medicines or advice. It was a comfortable, personal sort of place with
cheerful chintz hangings. The walls were lined with books, held in place
by sliding wooden slats, padlocked at the ends. There were a great many
scientific works in German and English; the rest were French novels in
paper covers. This morning he found Chessup weighing out white
powders at his desk. In the rack over his bunk was the book with which he
had read himself to sleep last night; the title, Un Crime d'Amour, lettered in
black on yellow caught Claude's eye. The doctor put on his coat and
pointed his visitor to the jointed chair in which patients were
The ship's doctor was a strange fellow to come from Canada, the land of
big men and rough. He looked like a schoolboy,
"Have you tried him on malted milk?" he asked, when Claude had told him how Fanning's nourishment was
"Four days; possibly five."
"Then Lieutenant Wheeler will lose his pal," said Dr.
"Have I your permission to go to the Chief Steward?" Doctor Trueman asked.
"Certainly not. But you can go without my knowledge. He's an ugly man to cross, and he can make it uncomfortable for you and your patients."
"Well, we'll say no more about it. I appreciate your telling me, and I will see that you don't get mixed up in this. Will you go down with me to look at that new meningitis case ?"
Claude waited impatiently in his stateroom for the doctor's return. He didn't
see why the Chief Steward shouldn't be exposed and dealt with like any
other grafter. He had hated the man ever since he heard him berating the old
bath steward one morning. Hawkins had made no attempt to defend
When Doctor Trueman came back from the hospital, he declared he was
now ready to call on Mr. Micks. "He's a nasty
They went to the Chief Steward's cabin and knocked.
"What's wanted?" called a threatening voice.
The doctor made a grimace to his companion and walked in. The Steward was sitting at a big desk, covered with account books. He turned in his chair. "I beg your pardon," he said coldly, "I do not see any one here. I will be —"
The doctor held up his hand quickly. "That's all right, Steward. I'm sorry
to intrude, but I've something I must say to you in private. I'll not detain
you long." If he had hesitated for a moment, Claude believed the Steward
would have thrown him out, but he went on rapidly. "This is Lieutenant
Wheeler, Mr. Micks. His fellow officer lies very ill with pneumonia in
stateroom 96. Lieutenant Wheeler has kept him alive by special nursing.
He is not able to retain
The steward rose and turned out the drop-light on his desk. "Have you received notice that there are no more eggs and oranges on board? Then I am afraid there is nothing I can do for you. I did not provision this ship."
"No. I understand that. I believe the United States Government provided
the fruit and eggs and meat. And I
"That is your own affair, but, you will not interfere with me in the discharge of my duties. Will you leave my cabin?"
"In a moment, Steward. I know that last night a number of cases of eggs and oranges were carried into this room. They are here now, and they belong to the A. E. F. If you will I agree to provision my man, what I know won't go any further. But if you refuse, I'll get this matter investigated. I won't stop till I do."
The Steward sat down, and took up a pen. His large, soft hand looked cheesy, like his face. "What is the number of the cabin?" he asked indifferently.
"Ninety-six."
"Exactly what do you require?"
"One dozen eggs and one dozen oranges every twenty-four bours, to be delivered at any time convenient to you."
"I will see what I can do."
The Steward did not look up from his writing pad, and his visitors left as abruptly as they had come.
At about four o'clock every morning, before even the bath stewards were
on duty, there was a scratching at Claude's door, and a covered basket
was left there by a messenger who was unwashed, half-naked, with a
sacking apron tied round his middle and his hairy chest splashed with
flour. He never spoke, had only one eye and an inflamed socket. Claude
Four days after their interview with Mr. Micks, when they were at last
nearing the end of the voyage, Doctor Trueman detained Claude after
medical inspection to tell him that the Chief Steward had come down with
the epidemic. "He sent for me last night and asked me to take his case—
won't have anything to do with Chessup. I had to get
Chessup's
"Is he very bad?"
"He hasn't a look-in, and he knows it. Complications; chronic Bright's
disease. It seems he has nine children. I'll try to get him into a hospital
when we make port, but he'll only live a few days at most. I wonder who'll
get the
A day came at last when Claude was wakened from sleep by a sense of stillness. He sprang up with a dazed fear that some one had died; but Fanning lay in his berth, breathing quietly.
Something caught his eye through the porthole,—a great grey shoulder
of land standing up in the pink light of dawn, powerful and strangely still
after the distressing instability of the sea. Pale trees and long, low
fortifications . . . close grey buildings with red roofs . . . little sailboats
bounding
He had always thought of his destination as a country shattered and desolated,—"bleeding France"; but he had never seen anything that looked so strong, so self-sufficient, so fixed from the first foundation, as the coast that rose before him. It was like a pillar of eternity. The ocean lay submissive at its feet, and over it was the great meekness of early morning. This grey wall, unshaken, mighty, was the end of the long preparation, as it was the end of the sea. It was the reason for everything that had happened in his life for the last fifteen months. It was the reason why Tannhauser and the gentle Virginian, and so many others who had set out with him, were never to have any life at all, or even a soldier's death. They were merely waste in a great enterprise, thrown overboard like rotten ropes. For them this kind release,— trees and a still shore and quiet water,— was never, never to be. How long would their bodies toss, he wondered, in that inhuman kingdom of darkness and unrest?
He was startled by a weak voice from behind.
"Claude, are we over?"
"Yes, Fanning. We're over."
AT noon that day Claude found himself in a street of little shops,
hot and perspiring, utterly confused and turned about. Truck drivers
and boys on bell-less bicycles shouted at him indignantly, furiously.
He got under the shade of a young plane tree and stood close to the
trunk, as if it might protect him. His greatest care, at any rate, was
off his hands. With the help of Victor Morse he had hired a
taxi for forty francs, taken Fanning to the base hospital, and
seen him into the arms of a big orderly from Texas. He came
away from the hospital with no idea where he was going —
Sergeant Hicks explained that they had been trudging about the town,
looking for cheese. After sixteen days of heavy, tasteless food, cheese
was what they all wanted. There was a grocery store up the street,
where there seemed to be everything else. He had tried to make the old
woman
"Don't these French people eat cheese, anyhow? What's
"Well, I'll try. Come along, boys."
Crowding close together, the ten men entered the shop. The
proprietress ran forward with an exclamation of despair. Evidently she
had thought she was done with them, and was, not pleased to see them
coming back. When she paused to take breath, Claude took off his hat
respectfully, and performed the bravest act of his life; uttered the first
phrase-book sentence he had ever spoken to a French person. His men
were at his back; he had to say something or run, there was no other
course. Looking the old woman in the eye, he steadily
"
?" It was almost
"
?" the shop woman screamed. Calling
They stood blinking in the gloom, inhaling a sour, damp, buttery, smear-kase smell, until their eyes penetrated the shadows and they saw that
there was nothing but cheese and butter in the place. The shopkeeper
was a fat woman, with black eyebrows that met above her nose; her
sleeves were rolled up, her cotton dress was open over her white throat
and bosom. She began at once to tell them that there was a restriction
on
"What's the matter with Mother, Lieutenant? What's she fussing about? Ain't she here to sell goods?"
Claude tried to look wiser than he was. "From what I can make out, there's some sort of restriction; you aren't allowed to buy all you want. We ought to have thought about that; this is a war country. I guess we've about cleaned her out."
"Oh, that's all right," said Hicks, wiping his clasp-knife. "We'll bring her some sugar tomorrow. One of the fellows who helped us unload at the docks told me you can always quiet'em if you give 'em sugar."
They surrounded her and held out their money for her to take her pay. "Come on, ma'm, don't be bashful. What's the matter, ain't this good money?
She was distracted by the noise they made, by their bronzed faces with
white teeth and pale eyes, crowding so close to her. Ten large, well-shaped hands with straight fingers, the open palms full of crumpled
notes. . . . Holding the men off under the pretence of looking for a
pencil, she made rapid
The situation was unfair. Whether she took much or little
Standing in her doorway, she watched the brown band go ambling
down the street; as they passed in front of the old church of St.
Jacques, the two foremost stumbled on a sunken step that was scarcely
above the level of the pavement. She laughed aloud. They looked back
and waved to her. She replied with a smile that was both friendly and
angry. She liked them, but not the legend of waste and prodigality that
ran before them—and followed after. It was superfluous land
disintegrating in a world of hard facts. An army in which the men had
meat for breakfast, and ate more every day than the French soldiers at
the front got in a week! Their
All this was not war-any more than having money thrust at you by
grown men who could not count, was business. It was an invasion, like
the other. The first destroyed material possessions, and this threatened
everybody's integrity.
As for the doughboys, having once stubbed their toes on the sunken step, they examined it with interest, and went in to explore the church. It was in their minds that they must not let a church escape, any more than they would let a Boche escape. Within they came upon a bunch of their shipmates, including the Kansas band, to whom they boasted that their Lieutenant could "speak French like a native."
The Lieutenant himself thought he was getting on pretty well, but a few hours later his pride was humbled. He was sitting alone in a little triangular park beside another church, admiring the cropped locust trees and watching some old women who were doing their mending in the shade. A little boy in a black apron, with a close-shaved, bare head, came along, skipping rope. He hopped lightly up to Claude and said in a most persuasive and confiding voice:
"
?"
Claude looked down into his admiring eyes with a feeling of panic. He
wouldn't mind being dumb to a man, or even to, a pretty girl, but this
was terrible. His tongue went dry, and his face grew scarlet. The child's
expectant gaze changed to
Many a serious mishap had distressed Claude less. He was
disappointed, too. There was something friendly in the boy's face that
he wanted . . . that he needed. As he rose he ground his heel into the
gravel. "Unless I can learn to talk to the
CLAUDE set off to find the Grand Hotel, where he promised to dine with
Victor Morse. The porter there spoke English. He called a red-headed
boy in a dirty uniform and told him to take the American to vingt-quatre
"
Victor was standing before the fireplace. "Hello, Wheeler, come in. Our dinner will be served up here. It's big enough, isn't it? I could get nothing between a coop, and this at fif teen dollars a day."
The room was spacious enough for a banquet; with two huge beds, and
great windows that swung in on hinges, like doors, and that had
certainly not been washed since before the war. The heavy red cotton-
brocade hangings and lace curtains were stiff with dust, the thick carpet
was strewn with cigarette-ends and matches. Razor blades and "Khaki
Comfort" boxes lay about on the dresser, and former occupants had left
their autographs in the dust on the table. Officers slept there, and went
away, and other officers arrived,— and the room remained the same, like
a wood in which travellers camp for the night.
When the waiter came, he dusted off the table with his apron and put
on a clean cloth, napkins, and glasses. Victor and his guest sat down
under an electric light bulb with a broken shade, around which a silent
halo of flies moved
"By the way," said Victor while the soup plates were being removed, "what do you think of this Wine? It cost me thirty francs the bottle."
"It tastes very good to me," Claude replied. "But then, it's the first champagne I've ever drunk."
"Really?" Victor drank off another glass and sighed. "I envy you. I wish I had it all to do over. Life's too short, you know.
"I should say you had made a good beginning. We're a long way from Crystal Lake."
"Not far enough." His host reached across the table and filled Claude's
empty glass. "I sometimes waken up with the feeling I'm back there. Or I
have bad dreams, and find as a brand from the burning. That's all the Scripture I
remember."
The bright red spots on Victor's cheeks, his pale forehead and brilliant eyes and saucy little moustaches seemed to give his quotation a peculiar vividness. Claude envied him. It must be great fun to take up a part and play it to a finish; to believe you were making yourself over, and to admire the kind of fellow you made. He, too, in a way, admired Victor,—though he couldn't altogether believe in him.
"You'll never go back," he said, "I wouldn't worry about that."
"Take it from me, there are thousands who will never go back! I'm not speaking of the casualties. Some of you Americans are likely to discover the world this trip . . . and it'll make the hell of a lot of difference! You boys never had a fair chance. There's a conspiracy of Church and State to keep you down. I'm going off to play with some girls tonight, will you come along?"
Claude laughed. "I guess not."
"Why not? You won't be caught, I guarantee."
"I guess not." Claude spoke apologetically. "I'm going out to see Fanning after dinner."
Victor shrugged. "That ass!" He beckoned the waiter to open another bottle and bring the coffee. "Well, it's your last chance to go nutting with me." He looked intently at Claude and lifted his glass. "To the future, and our next meeting!" When he put down his empty goblet he remarked, "I got a wire through today; I'm leaving tomorrow."
"For London?"
"For Verdun."
Claude took a quick breath. Verdun . . . the very sound of the name was
grim, like the hollow roll of drums. Victor was going there tomorrow.
Here one could take a train for
"Then you won't get to London soon?"
"God knows," Victor answered gloomily. He looked up at the ceiling and began to whistle softly an engaging air. "Do you know that? It's . something Maisie often plays; 'Roses of Picardy.' You won't know what a woman can be till you meet her, Wheeler."
"I hope I'll have that pleasure. I was wondering if you'd forgotten her for the moment. She doesn't object to these —diversions ?"
Victor lifted his eyebrows in the old haughty way, "Women don't require that sort of fidelity of the air service. Our engagements are too uncertain."
Half an hour later Victor had gone in quest of amorous adventure, and
Claude was wandering alone in a brightly lighted street full of soldiers and
sailors of all nations. There were black Senegalese, and Highlanders in kilts,
and little lorry-drivers from Siam,— all moving slowly along between rows of
cabarets and cinema theatres. The wide-spreading branches of the plane
trees met overhead, shutting out the sky and
Claude stationed himself before a movie theatre, where the sign in electric
lights read, "
!" and stood watching the people.
In the stream that passed him, his eye lit upon two walking arm-in-arm, their
hands clasped, talking eagerly and unconscious of the crowd,—
The man wore the American uniform; his left arm had been amputated at the
elbow, and he carried his head awry, as if he had a stiff neck. His dark, lean
face wore an
Without realizing what he did, Claude followed them out of the crowd into a
quiet street, and on into another, even more deserted, where the houses
looked as if they had been asleep a long while. Here there were no street
lamps, not
The two walking before him ascended the steps and
In the shadow of the houses opposite, Claude kept watch like a sentinel, ready to take their part if any alarm should startle them, The girl bent over her soldier, stroking his head so softly that she might have been putting him to sleep; took his one hand and held it against her bosom as if to stop the pain there just behind her, on the sculptured portal, some old bishop, with a pointed cap and a broken crozier, stood, holding up two fingers.
THE next morning when Claude arrived at the hospital to see Fanning,
he found every one too busy to take account of him. The courtyard
was full of
As the men were carried past him, he thought they looked
as if they had been sick a long while —looked, indeed, as if
they could never get well. The boys who died on board the
Anchises had never seemed as sick as these, did. Their skin
was yellow or purple, their eyes were sunken, their lips sore.
Everything that belonged to health had left them, every
These were the first wounded men Claude had seen. To shed bright blood, to wear the red badge of courage,—that was one thing; but to be reduced to this was quite another. Surely, the sooner these boys died, the better.
The Texan, passing with his next load, asked Claude why
be didn't go into the office and wait until the rush was over.
Looking in through the glass door, Claude noticed a young
man writing at a desk enclosed by a railing. Something about
his figure, about the way he held his head, was familiar.
"Where do these wounded men come from?" Claude asked. "I just got in on
the Anchises yesterday."
"They come from various evacuation hospitals. I believe most of them are the Château-Thierry lot."
"Where did you lose your arm?"
"Cantigny. I was in the First Division. I'd been over since last September, waiting for something to happen, and then got fixed in my first engagement."
"Can't you go home?"
"Yes, I could. But I don't want to. I've got used to things over here. I was attached to Headquarters in Paris for awhile."
Claude leaned across the rail. "We read about Cantigny at home, of course. We were a good deal excited; I suppose you were.
"Yes, we were nervous. We hadn't been under fire, and we'd been fed up on
all that stuff about it's taking fifty years to build a fighting machine. The
Hun had a strong position; we looked up that long hill and wondered how
we were going
Claude saw Doctor Trueman standing in the doorway, waiting for him. They made their morning call on Fanning, and left the hospital together. The Doctor turned to him as if he had something on his mind.
"I saw you talking to that wry-necked boy. How did he seem, all right?"
"Not exactly. That is, he seems very nervous. Do you know anything about him?"
"Oh, yes! He's a star patient here, a psychopathic case. I had just been,
talking to one of the doctors about him when I came out and saw you with
him. He was shot in the neck at Cantigny, where he lost his arm. The wound
healed, but his memory is affected; some nerve cut, I suppose, that
"He seems to be doing some sort of clerical work," Claude observed discreetly.
"Yes, they say he's very well educated. He remembers the books he has read better than his own life. He can't recall what his home town looks like, or his home. And the women are clear wiped out, even the girl he was going to marry."
Claude smiled. "Maybe he's fortunate in that."
The Doctor turned to him affectionately, "Now Claude, don't begin to talk like that the minute you land in this country."
Claude walked on past the church of St. Jacques. Last night already seemed like a dream, but it haunted him. He wished he could do something to help that boy; help him get away from the doctor who was writing a book about him, and the girl who wanted him to make the most of himself; get away and be lost altogether in what he had been lucky enough to find. All day, as Claude came and went, he looked among the crowds for that young face, so compassionate and tender.
DEEPER and deeper into flowery France! That was the sentence Claude kept
saying over to himself to the jolt of the wheels, as the long troop train went
south-
All the way down, Company B had been finding the old things instead of the
new,—or, to their way of thinking, the new things instead of the old. The
thatched roofs they had so counted upon seeing were few and far between.
But American binders, of well-known makes, stood where the fields were
beginning to ripen,— and they were being oiled
When B Company had first got their orders to go into a training camp in
north-central France, all the men were
The second night the boys were to spend in Rouen— and they would
have the following day to look about. Everybody knew what had
happened at Rouen—if any one didn't, his neighbours were only too
eager to inform him! It had
Tomorrow, when it came, proved to be black and cold, a day of pouring rain. As they filed through the narrow, crowded streets, that harsh Norman city presented no very cheering aspect. They were glad, at last, to find the waterside, to go out on the bridge and breathe the air in the great open space over the river, away from the clatter of cart-wheels and the hard voices and crafty faces of these townspeople, who seemed rough and unfriendly. From the bridge they looked up at the white chalk hills, the tops a blur of intense green under the low, lead-coloured sky. They watched the fleets of broad, deep-set river barges, coming and going under their feet, with tilted smoke-stacks. Only a little way up that river was Paris, the place where every doughboy meant to go; and as they leaned on the rail and looked down at the slow-flowing water, each one had in his mind a confused picture of what it would be like. The Seine, they felt sure, must be very much wider there, and it was spanned by many bridges, all longer than the bridge over the Missouri at Omaha. There would be spires and golden domes past counting, all the buildings higher than anything in Chicago, and brilliant —dazzlingly brilliant, nothing grey and shabby about it like this old Rouen. They attributed to the city of their desire incalculable immensity, bewildering vastness, Babylonian hugeness and heaviness—the only attributes they had been taught to admire.
Late in the morning Claude found himself alone before the
The entrance to the nave was closed by a cord, so he walked up the aisle
on the right, treading softly, passing chapels where solitary women knelt
in the light of a few tapers. Except for them, the church was empty ... .
empty. His own
When he reached the choir he turned, and saw, far behind him, the rose window, with its purple heart. As he stood staring, hat in hand, as still as the stone figures in the chapels, a great bell, up aloft, began to strike the hour in its deep, melodious throat; eleven beats, measured and far apart, as rich as the colours in the window, then silence . . . only in his memory the throbbing of an undreamed-of quality of sound. The revelations of the glass and the bell had come almost simultaneously, as if one produced the other; and both were superlatives toward which his mind had always, been groping,—or so it seemed to him then.
In front of the choir the nave was open, with no rope to shut it off.
Several straw chairs were huddled on a flag of the stone floor. After
some hesitation he took one, turned it round, and sat down facing the
window. If someone should come up to him and say anything, anything
at all, he would rise and say, "
." He repeated this to himself. to be quite sure he had it ready.
He was well satisfied that he hadn't his restless companions on his mind
now. He could sit here quietly until noon, and hear the bell strike again.
In the meantime, he must try to think: This was, of course, Gothic
architecture; he had read more or less about that, and ought to be able to
remember something. Gothic . . . that was a mere word; to him it
suggested
While he was vainly trying to think about architecture, some recollection
of old astronomy lessons brushed across his brain,— something about
stars whose light travels through space for hundreds of years before it
reaches the earth and the human eye. The purple and crimson and
peacock-green of this window had been shining quite as long as that
before it got to him. . . . He felt distinctly that it went through him
and farther still . . . as if his mother were looking over his
shoulder. He sat solemnly through the hour until twelve, his
elbows on his knees, his conical hat swinging between them in
his hand, looking up through the twilight with candid,
When Claude joined his company at the station, they had the laugh on
him. They had found the Cathedral,—and a
B COMPANY reached the training camp at S—— thirty-six men short:
twenty-five they had buried on the
Years ago, when General Pershing, then a handsome young Lieutenant
with a slender waist and yellow moustaches, was stationed as Commandant at the University of Nebraska, Walter Scott
was an officer in a company of cadets the
"I see you're an officer short, Captain Maxey," the Colonel remarked at
their conference. "I think I've got a man here to take his place. Lieutenant
Gerhardt is a New York man, came over in the band and got transferred to
infantry. He has lately been given a commission for good service. He's had
some experience and is a capable fellow." The Colonel sent his orderly out
to bring in a young man whom he
Claude had been ashamed of Tod Fanning, who was always showing himself a sap-head, and who would never have got a commission if his uncle hadn't been a Congressman. But the moment he met Lieutenant Gerhardt's eye, something like jealously flamed up in him. He felt in a flash that he suffered by comparison with the new officer; that he must be on his guard and must not let himself be patronized.
As they were leaving the Colonel's office together, Gerhardt asked him whether he had got his billet. Claude replied that after the men were in their quarters he would look out for something for himself.
The young man smiled. "I'm afraid you may have
Claude didn't want to go, didn't want to accept favours,—nevertheless he
went. They walked together along a dusty
Lieutenant Gerhardt must have been in this neighbourhood for some time; he seemed to know the people. On the road they passed several villagers; a rough-looking girl taking a cow out to graze, an old man with a basket on his arm, the postman on his bicycle;—they all spoke to Claude's companion as if they knew him well.
"What are these blue flowers that grow about everywhere?" Claude asked suddenly, pointing to a clump with his foot.
"Cornflowers," said the other. "The Germans call them ."
They were approaching the village, which lay on the edge of a wood,— a
wood so large one could not see the end of it;
She was fifty, perhaps, but though her hair was grey she had a look of
youthfulness; thin cheeks, delicately flushed with pink, and quiet,
smiling, intelligent eyes. Claude thought she looked like a New England
woman,— like the photographs of his mother's cousins and schoolmates.
Lieutenant
Gerhardt turned to Claude, speaking in a way which
Gerhardt went out of the gate and left him alone with his hostess. Her
mind seemed to read his thoughts. When he
As he came out of the house to start back to the barracks, he bowed to
her and tried to say, "
." He stopped
near the kitchen door to look at a many-branched rose vine that ran all
over the wall, full of cream-coloured, pink-tipped roses, just a shade
stronger in colour than the clay wall behind them. Madame Joubert came
over and stood beside him, looking at him and at the "
?" She took the scissors that hung by a ribbon from her
belt, cut one of the flowers and stuck it in his buttonhole. "
." She
made a little flourish with her thin hand.
Stepping into the street, he turned to shut the wooden door after him, and heard a soft stir in the dark tool-house at his elbow. From among the rakes and spades a child's frightened face was staring out at him. She was sitting on the ground with her lap full of baby kittens. He caught but a glimpse of her dull, pale face.
THE next morning Claude awoke with such a sense of physical well-being as he had not bad for a long time. The sun was shining brightly on the white plaster walls and on the red tiles of the floor. Green jalousies, half-drawn, shaded the upper part of the two windows. Through their slats, he could see the forking branches of an old locust tree that grew by the gate. A flock of pigeons flew over it, dipping and mounting with a sharp twinkle of silver wings. It was good to lie again in a house that was cared for by women. He must have felt that even in his sleep, for when he opened his eyes he was thinking about Mahailey and breakfast and summer mornings on the farm. The early stillness was sweet, and the feeling of dry, clean linen against his body. There was a smell of lavender about his warm pillow. He lay still for fear of waking Lieutenant Gerhardt. This was the sort of peace one wanted to enjoy alone. When he rose cautiously on his elbow and looked at the other bed, it was empty. His companion must have dressed and slipped out when day first broke. Somebody else who liked to enjoy things alone; that looked hopeful. But now that he had the place to himself, he decided to get up.
While he was dressing he could see old M. Joubert down in the
garden, watering the plants and vines, raking the sand fresh and smooth,
clipping off dead leaves and withered flowers and throwing them into a
wheelbarrow. These people had lost both their sons in the war, he had
been told, and now they were taking care of the property for their
grandchildren,
"Do you always sleep like that? It's an accomplishment. I made enough noise when I dressed,—kept dropping things, but it never reached you."
Madame Joubert came out of the kitchen in a purple flowered morning
gown, her hair in curl-papers under a lace cap. She brought the coffee
herself, and they sat down at the unpainted table without a cloth, and
drank it out of big
Madame Joubert amiably addressed herself to Claude; she knew that
Americans were accustomed to a different sort of morning repast, and if he
wished to bring bacon from the camp, she would gladly cook it for him.
She had even made "
," at which he blushed, not quite knowing
whether she were making fun of him or not.
"It is rather so in English, isn't it?" David asked.
"Well, it's a sissy name, if you mean that."
"Yes, it is, a little," David admitted candidly.
The day's work on the parade-ground was hard, and Captain Maxey's men were soft, felt the heat,— didn't size up well with the Kansas boys who had been hardened by service. The Colonel wasn't pleased with B Company and detailed them to build new barracks and extend the sanitation system. Claude got out and worked with the men. Gerhardt followed his example, but it was easy to see that he had never handled lumber or tin-roofing before. A kind of rivalry seemed to have sprung up between him and Claude, neither of them knew why.
Claude could see that the sergeants and corporals were a little uncertain
about Gerhardt. His laconic speech, never embroidered by the
picturesque slang they relished, his gravity, and his rare, incredulous
smile, alike puzzled them. Was the new officer a dude? Sergeant Hicks
asked of his chum, Dell Able. No, he wasn't a dude. Was he a swell-
head? No, not at all; but he wasn't a good mixer. He was "an Easterner";
what more he was would develop later. Claude sensed something
unusual about him. He suspected that Gerhardt knew a good many
things as well as he knew French, and that he tried to conceal it, as
people sometimes do when they feel they are not among their equals;
this idea
The next afternoon, work on the new barracks was called off because of rain. Sergeant Hicks set about getting up a boxing match, but when he went to invite the lieutenants, they had both disappeared. Claude was tramping toward the village, determined to get into the big wood that had tempted him ever since his arrival.
The highroad became the village street, and then, at the edge of the
wood, became a country road again, A little farther on, where the shade
grew denser, it split up into three wagon trails, two of them faint and
little used. One of these Claude followed. The rain had dwindled to a
steady patter, but the tall brakes growing up in the path splashed him to
the middle, and his feet sank in spongy, mossy earth. The light about
him, the very air, was green. The trunks of the trees were
The winding path turned again, and came out abruptly on a hillside, above an open glade piled with grey boulders. On the opposite rise of ground stood a grove of pines, with bare, red stems. The light, around and under them, was red like a rosy sunset. Nearly all the stems divided about half-way up into two great arms, which came together again at the top, like the pictures of old Grecian lyres.
Down in the grassy glade, among the piles of flint boulders, little white
birches shook out their shining leaves in the lightly moving air. All
about the rocks were patches of purple heath; it ran up into the crevices
between them like fire' On one, of these bald rocks sat Lieutenant
Gerhardt, hatless, in an attitude of fatigue or of deep dejection, his hands
clasped about his knees, his bronze hair ruddy in the sun. After
watching
"Will I be in the way?" he asked as he stopped at the foot of the rocks.
"Oh, no!" said the other, moving a little and unclasping his hands.
Claude sat down on a boulder. "Is this heather?" he asked. "I thought I recognized it, from 'Kidnapped.' This part of the world is not as new to you as it is to me.
"No. I lived in Paris for several years when I was a student."
"What were you studying?"
"The violin."
"You are a musician?" Claude looked at him wonderingly.
"I was," replied the other with a disdainful smile, languidly stretching out his legs in the heather.
"That seems too bad," Claude remarked gravely.
"What does?"
"Why, to take fellows with a special talent. There are enough of us who haven't any."
Gerhardt rolled over on his back and put his hands under his head. "Oh,
this affair is too big for exceptions; it's
When they retraced their steps, the wood was full of green twilight.
Their relations had changed somewhat during the
Since the rain was over, Madame Joubert had laid the cloth on the plank table under the cherry tree, as on the previous evenings. Monsieur was bringing the chairs, and the little girl was carrying out a pile of heavy plates. She rested them against her stomach and leaned back as she walked, to balance them. She wore shoes, but no stockings, and her faded cotton dress switched about her brown legs. She was a little Belgian refugee who had been sent there with her mother. The mother was dead now, and the child would not even go to visit her grave. She could not be coaxed from the court-yard into the quiet street. If the neighbour children came into the garden on an errand, she hid herself. She would have no playmates but the cat; and now she had the kittens in the tool house.
Dinner was very cheerful that evening. M. Joubert was pleased that the storm had not lasted long enough to hurt the wheat. The garden was fresh and bright after the rain. The cherry tree shook down bright drops on the tablecloth when the breeze stirred. The mother cat dozed on the red cushion in Madame Joubert's sewing chair, and the pigeons fluttered down to snap up earthworms that wriggled in the wet sand. The shadow of the house fell over the dinner-table, but the tree- tops stood up in full sunlight, and the yellow sun poured on the earth wall and the cream-coloured roses. Their petals, ruffled by the rain, gave out a wet, spicy smell.
Monsieur Joubert must have been ten years older than his wife. There
was a great contentment in his manner and a pleasant sparkle in his eye.
He liked the young officers. Gerhardt had been there more than two
weeks, and somewhat relieved
Madame Joubert was pleased to hear that they had been
The little maid who served them moved about noiselessly.
Her dull eyes never seemed to look; yet she saw when it was
time to bring the heavy soup tureen, and when it was time to
take it away. Madame Joubert had found that Claude liked
his potatoes with his meat — when there was meat — and not in
a course by themselves. She had each time to tell the little girl
to go and fetch them. This the child did with manifest
"What is the matter with that child?" Claude asked as they hurried out of the gate. "Do you suppose she was hurt, or abused in some way?"
"Terrorized. She often screams like that at night. Haven't you heard her? They have to go and wake her, to stop it. She doesn't speak any French; only Walloon. Arid she can't or won't learn, so they can't tell what goes on in her poor little head."
In the two weeks of intensive training that followed, Claude marvelled at Gerhardt's spirit and endurance. The muscular strain of mimic trench operations was more of a tax on him than on any of the other officers. He was as tall as Claude, but he weighed only a hundred and forty-six pounds, and he had not been roughly bred like most of the others. When his fellow officers learned that he was a violinist by profession, that he could have had a soft job as interpreter or as an organizer of camp entertainments, they no longer resented his reserve or his occasional superciliousness. They respected a man who could have wriggled out and didn't.
ON the march at last; through a brilliant August day
Colonel Scott's battalion was streaming along one of
the dusty, well-worn roads east of the Somme, their
railway base well behind them. The way led through
The Americans went through every village in march step, colours flying, the band playing, "to show that the morale was high," as the officers said. Claude trudged on the outside of the column,— now at the front of his company, now at the rear,— wearing a stoical countenance, afraid of betraying his satisfaction in the men, the weather, the country.
They were bound for the big show, and on every hand were reassuring signs: long lines of gaunt, dead trees, charred and torn; big holes gashed out in fields and hillsides, already half concealed by new undergrowth; winding depressions in the earth, bodies of wrecked motor-trucks and automobiles lying along the road, and everywhere endless straggling lines of rusty barbed-wire, that seemed to have been put there by chance,— with no purpose at all.
"Begins to look like we're getting in, Lieutenant," said Sergeant Hicks, smiling behind his salute.
Claude nodded and passed forward.
"Well, we can't arrive any too soon for us, boys?" The Sergeant looked
over his shoulder, and they grinned, their teeth
They made camp early in the afternoon, on a hill covered with half- burned pines. Claude took Bert and Dell Able and Oscar the Swede, and set off to make a survey and report the terrain. Behind the hill, under the burned edge of the wood, they found an abandoned farmhouse and what seemed to be a clean well.
It had a solid stone curb about it, and a wooden bucket hanging by a rusty wire. When the boys splashed the bucket about, the water sent up a pure, cool breath. But they were wise boys, and knew where dead Prussians most loved to hide. Even the straw in the stable they regarded with suspicion, and thought it would be just as well not to bed anybody there.
Swinging on to the right to make their circuit, they got into mud; a low
field where the drain ditches had been neglected and had overflowed.
There they came upon a pitiful group of humanity, bemired. A woman, ill
and wretched looking, sat on a fallen log at the end of the marsh, a baby
in her lap and three children hanging about her. She was far gone in
consumption; one had only to listen to her breathing and to look at her
white, perspiring face to feel how weak she was. Draggled, mud to the
knees, she was trying to nurse her baby, half hidden under
Claude approached the woman, and touching the rim of his helmet,
began: "
?"
She tried to speak, but went off into a spasm of coughing, only able to gasp, "'Toinette, 'Toinette!"
'Toinette stepped quickly forward. She was about eleven, and, seemed to be the captain of the party. A bold, hard little face with a long chin, straight black hair tied with rags, uneasy, crafty eyes; she looked much less gentle and more experienced than her mother. She began to, explain, and she was very clever at making herself understood. She was used to talking to foreign soldiers,— spoke slowly, with emphasis and ingenious gestures.
She, too, had been reconnoitering. She had discovered the empty
farmhouse and was trying to get her party there for the night. How did
they come here? Oh, they were refugees. They had been staying with
people thirty kilometers from here. They were trying to get back to their
own village. Her mother was very sick, , and she wanted
to go home to die. They had heard people were still living there; an old
aunt was living in their own cellar,— and so could they if they once got
there. The point was, and she made it over and over, that her mother
wished to die ? They had
While she talked in her shrill, clicking voice, the baby began to howl,
dissatisfied with its nourishment The little girl shrugged. "
"
," he told her, with the grave
caesural pause which he always made in the middle of a French
sentence. She understood him. No distortion of her native tongue
surprised or perplexed her. She was
Had they anything to eat? ?
"
."
Wasn't her mother ?
She shrugged; Monsieur could see for himself.
And her father?
He was dead;
"At the Marne?" Claude repeated, glancing in perplexity at the nursing baby.
Her sharp eyes followed his, and she instantly divined his doubt. "The baby?" she said quickly. "Oh, the baby is not my brother, he is a Boche."
For a moment Claude did not understand. She repeated her explanation impatiently, something disdainful and sinister in her metallic little voice. A slow blush mounted to his forehead.
He pushed her toward her mother, "
."
"I guess we'll have to get them over to that farmhouse," he told the men. He repeated what he had got of the child's story. When he came to her laconic statement about the baby, they looked at each other. Bert Fuller was afraid he might cry again, so he kept muttering, "By God, if we'd a- got here sooner, by God if we had!" as they ran back along the ditch.
Dell and Oscar made a chair of their crossed hands and
Claude walked behind, holding the screaming baby stiffly in his arms. How was it possible for a baby to have such definite personality, he asked himself, and how was it possible to dislike a baby so much? He hated it for its square, tow-thatched head and bloodless ears, and carried it with loathing . . . no wonder it cried! When it got nothing by screaming and stiffening, however, it suddenly grew quiet; regarded him with pale blue eyes, and tried to make itself comfortable against his khaki coat. It put out a grimy little fist and took hold of one of his buttons. "Kamerad, eh?" he muttered, glaring at the infant. "Cut it out!"
Before they had their own supper that night, the boys
FOUR O'clock . . . a summer dawn . . . his first
Claude had just been along the line to see that the gun teams were in
position. This hour, when the light was changing, was a favourite time for
attack. He had come in late last night, and had everything to learn.
Mounting the fire-step, he peeped over the parapet between the
sandbags, into the low, twisting mist. Just then he could see nothing but
the wire entanglement, with birds hopping along the top wire, singing and
chirping as they did on the wire fences at home. Clear and flute-like they
sounded in the heavy air,—and they were the only sounds. A little breeze
came up, slowly
That dull
stretch of grey and green was No Man's Land. Those low, zigzag
mounds, like giant molehills protected by wire hurdles, were the Hun
trenches; five or six lines of them. He could easily follow the
communication trenches without a glass. At one point their front line
could not be more than eighty yards away, at another it must be all of
three hundred. Here and there thin columns of smoke began to rise; the
Hun was getting breakfast; everything was comfortable and natural..
Behind the enemy's position the country rose
It was amazing how simply things could be done. His battalion had marched in quietly at midnight, and the line they came to relieve had set out as silently for the rear. It all took place in utter darkness. just as B Company slid down an incline into the shallow rear trenches, the country was lit for a moment by two star shells, there was a rattling of machine guns, German Maxims,—a sporadic crackle that was not followed up. Filing along the communication trenches, they listened anxiously; artillery fire would have made it bad for, the other' men who were marching to the rear. But nothing happened. They had a quiet night, and this morning, here they were!
The sky flamed up saffron and silver. Claude looked at his watch, but he could not bear to go just yet. How long it took a Wheeler to get round to anything 1. Four years on the way; now that he was here, he would enjoy the scenery a bit, he guessed. He wished his mother could know how he felt this morning. But perhaps she did know. At any rate, she would not have him anywhere else. Five years ago, when he was sitting on the steps of the Denver State House and knew that nothing unexpected could ever happen to him . . . suppose he could have seen, in a flash, where he would be today? He cast a long look at the reddening, lengthening landscape, and dropped down on the duckboard.
Claude made his way back to the dugout into which he and Gerhardt had
thrown their effects last night. The former
He found Gerhardt still asleep on his bed, and shook him until he sat up.
"How long have you been out, Claude? Didn't you, sleep?"
"A little. I wasn't very tired. I suppose we could heat shaving water on this stove; they've left us half a bottle of alcohol. It's quite a comfortable little hole, isn't it?"
"It will doubtless serve its purpose," David remarked dryly. "So sensitive to any criticism of this war! Why, it's not your affair; you've only just arrived."
"I know," Claude replied meekly, as he began to fold his blankets. "But it's likely the only one I'll ever be in, so I may as well take an interest."
The next afternoon four young men, all more or less naked, were busy
about a shellhole full of opaque brown water.
Bruger and Hammond, the two second Lieutenants, were already out of
their bath, and reclined on what might almost
"You wait till winter," Gerhardt told them. He was still splashing in the hole, up to his armpits in muddy water. "You won't get a wash once in three months then. Some of the Tommies told me that when they got their first bath after Vimy, their skins peeled off like a snake's. What are you doing with my trousers, Bruger?"
"Hunting for your knife. I dropped mine yesterday, when that shell exploded in the cut-off. I darned near dropped my old nut!"
"Shucks, that wasn't anything. Don't keep blowing about it —shows you're a greenhorn."
Claude stripped off his shirt and slid into the pool beside Gerhardt. "Gee, I hit something sharp down there! Why didn't you fellows pull out the splinters?"
He shut his eyes, disappeared for a moment, and came up sputtering, throwing on the ground a round metal object, coated with rust and full of slime. "German helmet, isn't it? Phew!" He wiped his face and looked about suspiciously.
"Phew is right!" Bruger turned the object over with a stick. "Why in hell didn't you bring up the rest of him? You've spoiled my bath. I hope you enjoy it."
Gerhardt scrambled up the side. "Get out, Wheeler! Look at that," he
pointed to big sleepy bubbles, bursting up through the thick water.
"You've stirred up trouble, all right!
Claude got out after him, looking back at the activity in the water. "I
don't see how pulling out one helmet could stir the
"Ever study chemistry?" Bruger asked scornfully. "You just opened up a graveyard, and now we get the exhaust. If you swallowed any of that German cologne Oh, you should worry!"
Lieutenant Hammond, still barelegged, with his shirt tied over his
shoulders, was scratching in his notebook. Before they left he put up a
placard on a split stick.
No Public Bathing! Private Beach
The first letters from home! The supply wagons brought them up, and
every man in the Company got something except Ed Drier, a farm-hand
from the Nebraska sand hills, and Willy Katz, the tow-headed Austrian
boy from the South Omaha
No second class matter was sent up,—the boys had hoped for
newspapers from home to give them a little war news, since they never
got any here. Dell Able's sister, however, had Star; a long account by one of the British war
correspondents in Mesopotamia,
"That's a lie!"
Dell looked up at him, annoyed by the interruption. "How do you know it is?"
"Because; the Lord put four cherubims with swords to guard the Garden, and there ain't no man going to find it. It ain't intended they should. The Bible says so."
Hicks began to laugh, "Why, that was about six thousand years ago, you cheese! Do you suppose your cherubims are still there?"
"'Course they are. What's a thousand years to a cherubim? Nothin!"
The Swede rose and sullenly gathered up his socks.
Dell Able looked at his chum. "Ain't he the complete bone-head? Solid ivory!"
Oscar wouldn't listen further to a "pack of lies" and walked off with his washing.
Battalion Headquarters was nearly half a mile behind the front line, part
dugout, part shed, with a plank roof sodded over. The Colonel's office was
partitioned off at one end; the rest of the place he gave over to the officers
for a kind of club room. One night Claude went back to make a report on
the new placing of the gun teams. The young officers were sitting
There was one officer who could talk all the others down, wherever he was; Captain Barclay Owens, attached from the Engineers. He was a little stumpy thumb of a man, only five feet four, and very broad,—a dynamo of energy. Before the war he was building a dam in Spain, "the largest dam in the world," and in his excavations he had discovered the ruins of one of Julius Caesar's fortified camps. This had been too much for his easily- inflamed imagination. He photographed and measured and brooded upon these ancient remains. He was an engineer by day and an archaeologist by night. He had crates of books sent down from Paris,— everything that had been written on Caesar, in French and German; he engaged a young priest to translate aloud to him in the evening. The priest believed the American was mad.
When Owens was in college he had never shown the least interest in
classical studies, but now it was as if he were giving birth to Caesar. The
war came along, and stopped the work on his dam. It also drove other
ideas into his exclusively
In the Battalion, Owens was called "Julius Caesar," and the men never
knew whether he was explaining the Roman general's operations in Spain,
or Joffre's at the Marne, he jumped so from
"Now you fellows don't want to forget that the night-life of Paris is not a
typical thing at all; that's a show got up for foreigners. . . . The French
peasant, he's a thrifty fellow. . . . This red wine's all right if you don't
abuse it; take it two-thirds water and it keeps off dysentery. . . . You don't
have to be rough with them, simply firm. Whenever one of them accosts
me, I follow a regular plan; first, I give her twenty-five francs; then I look
her in the eye and say, 'My girl, I've got three children,
"But that's so expensive! It must keep you poor, Captain Owens," said young Lieutenant Hammond innocently. The others roared.
Claude knew that David particularly detested Captain Owens of the Engineers, and wondered that he could go on working with such concentration, when snatches of the Captain's lecture kept breaking through the confusion of casual talk and the noise of the phonograph. Owens, as he walked up and down, cast furtive glances at Gerhardt. He had got wind of the fact that there was something out of the ordinary about him.
The men kept the phonograph going; as soon as one record buzzed out,
somebody put in another. Once, when a new tune began, Claude saw
David look up from his paper with a curious
When they were going back along the communication trench in the rain, wading single file, Claude broke the silence abruptly. "That was one of your records they played tonight, that violin solo, wasn't it?"
"Sounded like it. Now we go to the right. I always get lost here."
"Are there many of your records?"
"Quite a number. Why do you ask?"
"I'd like to write my mother. She's fond of good music. She'll get your records, and it will sort of bring the whole thing closer to her, don't you see?"
"All right, Claude," said David good-naturedly. "She will find them in the
catalogue, with my picture in uniform
Gerhardt held open the mouth of a gunny sack, and Claude thrust the squirming corner of his blanket into it and vigorously trampled whatever fell to the bottom. "Where do you suppose the other is?"
"He'll join us later. I don't mind the rats half so much as
I do Barclay Owens. What a sight he would be with
his clothes off! Turn in; I'll go the rounds." Gerhardt
splashed out along the submerged duckboard. Claude took off
his shoes and cooled his feet in the muddy water. He wished
he could ever get David to talk about his profession, and
THE following night, Claude was sent back to Division Headquarters at Q—— with information the Colonel did not care to commit to paper. He set off at ten o'clock, with Sergeant Hicks for escort. There had been two days of rain, and the communication trenches were almost knee-deep in water. About half a mile back of the front line, the two men crawled out of the ditch and went on above ground. There was very little shelling along the front that night. When a flare went up, they dropped and lay on their faces, trying, at the same time, to get a squint at what was ahead of them.
The ground was rough, and the darkness thick; it was past midnight when they reached the east-and-west road—usually full of traffic, and not entirely deserted even on a night like this. Trains of horses were splashing through the mud, with shells on their backs, empty supply wagons were coming back from the front. Claude and Hicks paused by the ditch, hoping to get a ride. The rain began to fall with such violence that they looked about for shelter. Stumbling this way and that, they ran into a big artillery piece, the wheels sunk over the hubs in a mud-hole.
"Who's there?" called a quick voice, unmistakably British.
"American infantrymen, two of us. Can we get onto one of your trucks till this lets up?"
"Oh, certainly! We can make room for you in here, if you're not too big. Speak quietly, or you'll waken the Major."
Giggles and smothered laughter; a flashlight winked for a moment and showed a line of five trucks, the front and rear ones covered with tarpaulin tents. The voices came from the shelter next the gun. The men inside drew up their legs and made room for the strangers; said they were sorry they hadn't, anything dry to offer them except a little rum. The intruders accepted this gratefully.
The Britishers were a giggly lot, and Claude thought, from their voices, they must all be very young. They joked about their Major as if he were their schoolmaster. There wasn't room enough on the truck for anybody to lie down, so they sat with their knees under their chins and exchanged gossip. The gun team belonged to an independent battery that was sent about over the country, "wherever needed." The rest of the battery had got through, gone on to the east, but this big gun was always getting into trouble; now something had gone wrong with her tractor and they couldn't pull her out. They called her "Jenny," and said she was taken with fainting fits now and then, and had to be humoured. It was like going about with your grandmother, one of the invisible Tommies said, "she is such a pompous old thing!" The Major was asleep on the rear truck; he was going to get the V. C. for sleeping. More giggles.
No, they hadn't any idea where they were going; of course, the officers knew, but artillery officers never told anything. What was this country like, anyhow? They were new to this part, had just come down from Verdun.
Claude said he had a friend in the air service up there; did they happen to know anything about Victor Morse?
Morse, the American ace? Hadn't he heard? Why, that got into the
London papers. Morse was shot down inside the
"Then I suppose he never got his leave?" Claude asked.
They didn't know. He got a fine citation.
The men settled down to wait for the weather to improve or the night to pass. Some of them fell into a doze, but Claude felt wide awake. He was wondering about the flat in Chelsea; whether the heavy-eyed beauty had been very sorry, or whether she was playing "Roses of Picardy" for other young officers. He thought mournfully that he would never go to London now. He had quite counted on meeting Victor there some day, after the Kaiser had been properly disposed of. He had really liked Victor. There was something about that fellow . . . a sort of debauched baby, he was, who went seeking his enemy in the clouds. What other age could have produced such a figure? That was one of the things about this war; it took a little fellow from a little town, gave him an air and a swagger, a life like a movie-film,—and then a death like the rebel angels.
A man like Gerhardt, for instance, had always lived in a more or less
rose-coloured world; he belonged over here, really. How could he know
what hard moulds and crusts the big guns had broken open on the other
side of the sea? Who could ever make him understand how far it was
from the
By three o'clock the rain had stopped. Claude and Hicks set off again,
accompanied by one of the gun team who was going back to get help
for their tractor. As it began to grow
"You haven't been over very long, have you?" Claude asked in a fatherly tone, as they took the road again.
"I came out in 'sixteen. I was formerly in the infantry."
The Americans liked to hear him talk; he spoke very quickly, in a high, piping voice.
"How did you come to change?"
"Oh, I belonged to one of the Pal Battalions, and we got cut to pieces. When I came out of hospital, I thought I'd try another branch of the service, seeing my pals were gone."
"Now, just what is a Pal Battalion?" drawled Hicks. He hated all English words he didn't understand, though he didn't mind French ones in the least.
"Fellows who signed up together from school," the lad piped.
Hicks glanced at Claude. They both thought this boy ought to be in school for some time yet, and wondered what he looked like when he first came over.
"And you got cut up, you say?" he asked sympathetically.
"Yes, on the Somme. We had rotten luck. We were sent over to take a trench and couldn't. We didn't even get to the wire. The Hun was so well prepared that time, we couldn't manage it. We went over a thousand, and we came back seventeen."
A hundred and seventeen?"
"No, seventeen."
Hicks whistled and again exchangd looks with Claude.
They could neither of them doubt him. There was something very unpleasant about the idea of a thousand fresh-faced schoolboys being sent out against the guns. "It must have been a fool order," he commented. "Suppose there was some mistake at Headquarters?"
"Oh, no, Headquarters knew what it was about! We'd have taken it, if we'd had any sort of luck. But the Hun happened to be full of fight. His machine guns did for us."
"You were hit yourself?" Claude asked him.
"In the leg. He was popping away at me all the while, but I wriggled back on my tummy. When I came out of the hospital, my leg wasn't strong, and there's less marching in the artillery."
"I should think you'd have had about enough."
"Oh, a fellow can't stay out after all his chums have been killed! He'd think about it all the time, you know," the boy replied in his clear treble.
Claude and Hicks got into Headquarters just as the cooks were turning out to build their fires. One of the corporals took them to the officers' bath,— a shed with big tin tubs,—and carried away their uniforms to dry them in the kitchen. It would be an hour before the officers would be about, he said, and in the meantime he would manage to get clean shirts and socks for them.
"Say, Lieutenant," Hicks brought out as he was rubbing himself down with a real bath towel, "I don't want to hear any more about those Pal Battalions, do you? It gets my goat. So long as we were going to get into this, we might have been a little more previous. I hate to feel small."
"Guess we'll have to take our medicine," Claude said dryly. "There wasn't anywhere to duck, was there? I felt like it. Nice little kid. I don't believe American boys ever seem as young as that."
"Why, if you met him anywhere else, you'd be afraid of using bad words before him, he's so pretty! What's the use of sending an orphan asylum out to be slaughtered? I can't see it," grumbled the fat sergeant. "Well, it's their business. I'm not going to let it spoil my breakfast. Suppose we'll draw ham and eggs, Lieutenant?"
AFTER breakfast Claude reported to Headquarters and talked with one of the staff majors. He was told he would have to wait until tomorrow to see Colonel James, who had been called to Paris for a general conference. He had left in his car at four that morning, in response to a telephone message.
"There's not much to do here, by way of amusement," said the Major. "A
movie show tonight, and you can get anything you want at the
Claude asked whether he could walk in on them without any kind of introduction.
"Oh, yes, they're used to us! I'll give you a card to Mademoiselle Olive,
though. She's a particular friend of mine. There you are: 'Mlle. Olive de
Courcy, introducing, etc.' And, you
Even with an introduction, Claude felt some hesitancy about presenting
himself to these ladies. Perhaps they didn't like Americans; he was always
afraid of meeting French people
Claude thought he would stroll about to look at the town a little. It had been taken by the Germans in the autumn of 1914, after their retreat from the Marne, and they had held it until about a year ago, when it was retaken by the English and the Chasseurs d'Alpins. They had been able to reduce it and to drive the Germans out, only by battering it down with artillery; not one building remained standing.
Ruin was ugly, and it was nothing more, Claude was thinking, as he
followed the paths that ran over piles of brick and plaster. There was
nothing picturesque about this, as there was in the war pictures one saw
at home. A cyclone or a fire might have done just as good a job. The
place was simply a great dump-heap; an exaggeration of those which
disgrace the outskirts of American towns. It was the same thing over and
over; mounds of burned brick-and broken stone, heaps of rusty, twisted
iron, splintered beams and rafters, stagnant pools,
This had been a rich town of eighteen thousand inhabitants; now the
civilian population was about four hundred. There were people there
who had hung on all through the years of German occupation; others
who, as soon as they heard that the enemy was driven out, came back
from wherever they had found shelter. They were living in cellars, or in
little wooden barracks
The sun had come out hot after three days of rain. The stagnant pools and the weeds that grew in the ditches gave out a rank, heavy smell. Wild flowers grew triumphantly over the piles of rotting wood and rusty iron; cornflowers and Queen Anne's lace and poppies; blue and white and red, as if the French colours came up spontaneously out of the French soil, no matter what the Germans did to it.
Claude paused before a little shanty built against a half-demolished brick
wall. A gilt cage hung in the doorway, with a canary, singing beautifully.
An old woman was working in the garden patch, picking out bits of brick
and plaster the rain had washed up, digging with her fingers around the
pale
She wiped her hands on her apron and took, him by the elbow. "
!"
(He learned afterward that every one was directed to go this way or that from a disabled British tank that had been left on the site of the old town hall.)
A little girl ran out of the barrack, and her grandmother told her to go at
once and take the American to the Red Cross. Marie put her hand in
Claude's and led him off along one of the paths that wound among the
rubbish. She took
"
," Marie "
," but he sometimes drank too much alcohol, and that was a bad
habit. Perhaps now, since his comrade had stepped into a cellar hole
Monday night while he was drunk, and had been drowned, her "Sharlie"
would be warned and would do better. Marie was evidently a well
brought up child. Her father, she said, had been a schoolmaster. At the
foot of the convent hill she turned to go home. Claude called her back
and awkwardly tried to give her some money, but she thrust her hands
behind her and said resolutely, "
," and
then ran away down the path.
As he climbed toward the top of the hill he noticed that the ground had been cleaned up a bit. The path was clear, the bricks and hewn stones had been piled in neat heaps, the broken hedges had been trimmed and the dead parts cut away. Emerging at last into the garden, he stood still for wonder; even though it was in ruins, it seemed so beautiful after the disorder of the world below.
The gravel walks were clean and shining. A wall of very old boxwoods
stood green against a row of dead Lombardy
The barrack was built against the walls of the cloister,—three arches of
which remained, like a stone wing to the shed of planks. On a ladder
stood a one-armed young man, "
," he exclaimed.
The one aloft spat his nails out into his palm, looked down, and laughed. He was about Claude's age, with very yellow hair and moustache and blue eyes. A charming looking fellow.
"Willingly," he said. "This is no great affair, but I do it to amuse myself, and it will be pleasant for the ladies." He descended and gave his hammer to the visitor. Claude set to work on the frame, while the other went under the stone arches and brought back a roll of canvas,—part of an old tent, by the look of it.
"
," he explained, unrolling it upon the grass. "I
found it among their filth in the cellar, and had the idea, to make a
pavilion for the ladies, as our trees are destroyed." He stood up
suddenly. "Perhaps you have come to see the ladies?"
"
."
Very well, the boy said, they would get the pavilion done
While they were working together, tying the cloth up to the frame, Claude,
from his elevation, saw a tall girl coming slowly up the path by which he
had ascended. She paused at the top, by the boxwood hedge, as if she
were very tired, and stood looking at them. Presently she approached the
Claude came down from his perch.
"Are you Mademoiselle de Courcy? I am Claude Wheeler. I have a note of introduction to you, if I can find it."
She took the card, but did not look at it. "That is not necessary. Your uniform is enough. Why have you come?"
He looked at her in some confusion. "Well, really, I don't know! I am just in from the front to see Colonel James, and he is in Paris, so I must wait over a day. One of the staff suggested my coming up here— I suppose because it is so nice!" he finished ingenuously.
"Then you are a guest from the front, and you will have lunch with Louis
and me. Madame Barre is also gone for the day. Will you see our house?"
She led him through the low door into a living room, unpainted,
uncarpeted, light and airy. There were coloured war posters on the clean
board walls, brass shell-cases full of wild flowers and garden flowers,
"We have no guest room," said Mademoiselle de Courcy. "But you will come to mine, and Louis will bring you hot water to wash."
In a wooden chamber at the end of the passage, Claude took off his coat,
and set to work to make himself as tidy as
When he came out, the table in the living room was set for three. The
stout old dame who was placing the plates paid no attention to him,—
seemed, from her expression, to scorn him and all his kind. He withdrew as
far as possible out of her path and picked up a book from the table, a
volume of Heine's
Before lunch Mademoiselle de Courcy showed him the store room in the
rear, where the shelves were stocked with rows of
Claude's face glowed with pleasure. Yes, his country had a long arm.
People forgot that; but here, he felt, was some one who did not forget.
When they sat down to lunch he learned that Mademoiselle de Courcy and
Madame Barre had been here almost a year now; they came soon after the
town was
"They must love their country so much, don't you think, when they endure
such poverty to come back to it?" she said. "Even the old ones do not
often complain about their dear things—their linen, and their china, and
their beds. If they have the ground, and hope, all that they can make again.
This war has taught us all how little the made things matter. Only the
Exactly so; hadn't he been trying to say this ever since he was born?
Hadn't he always known it, and hadn't it made life both bitter and sweet for
him? What a beautiful voice she had, this Mademoiselle Olive, and how
nobly it dealt with the
"It is our trees that are worst," she went on sadly. "You have seen our poor trees? It makes one ashamed for this beautiful part of France. Our people are more sorry for them than to lose their cattle and horses."
Mlle. de Courcy looked over-taxed by care and
After the coffee, Mademoiselle de Courcy went to work at her desk, and
Louis took Claude to show him the garden. The clearing and trimming and
planting were his own work, and he had done it all with one arm. This
autumn he would accomplish much more, for he was stronger now, and he
had the
Among the flowers, which had come back self-sown or from old roots,
Claude found a group of tall, straggly plants with Gaura,
that grew along the clay banks of Lovely Creek, at home. He had never
thought it very pretty, but he was pleased to find it here. He had
supposed it was one of those nameless prairie flowers that grew on the
prairie and nowhere else.
When they went back to the barrack, Mademoiselle Olive was sitting in one of the canvas chairs Louis had placed under" the new pavilion.
"What a fine fellow he is!" Claude exclaimed, looking after him.
"Louis? Yes. He was my brother's orderly. When Emile came home on
leave he always brought Louis with him, and Louis became like one of
the family. The shell that killed my brother tore off his arm. My mother
and I went to visit him in the hospital, and he seemed ashamed to be
alive, poor boy, when my brother was dead. He put his hand over his
face and began to cry, and said, '
!'"
Although Mademoiselle Olive spoke English well, Claude saw that she
did so only by keeping her mind intently upon it. The stiff sentences
she uttered were foreign to her nature; her face and eyes ran ahead of
her tongue and made one wait eagerly for what was coming. He sat
down in a sagging canvas chair, absently twisting a sprig of Gaura he
had pulled.
"You have found a flower?" She looked up.
"Yes. It grows at home, on my father's farm."
She dropped the faded shirt she was darning. "Oh, tell
Nebraska— What was it? How many days from the sea, what did it look like? As he tried to describe it, she listened with half-closed eyes. "Flat— covered with grain—muddy rivers. I think it must be like Russia. But your father's farm; describe that to me, minutely, and perhaps I can see the rest."
Claude took a stick and drew a square in the sand: there, to begin with, was the house and farmyard; there was the big pasture, with Lovely Creek flowing through it; there were the wheatfields and cornfields, the timber claim; more wheat and corn, more pastures. There it all was, diagrammed on the yellow sand, with shadows gliding over it from the half-charred locust trees. He would not have believed that he could tell a stranger about it in such detail. It was partly due to his listener, no doubt; she gave him unusual sympathy, and the glow of an unusual mind. While she bent over his map, questioning him, a light dew of perspiration gathered on her upper lip, and she breathed faster from her effort to see and understand everything. He told her about his mother and his father and Mahailey; what life was like there in summer and winter and autumn—what it had been like in that fateful summer when the Hun was moving always toward Paris, and on those three days when the French were standing at the Marne; how his mother and father waited for him to bring the news at night, and how the very cornfields seemed to hold their breath.
Mademoiselle Olive sank back wearily in her chair. Claude looked up
and saw tears sparkling in her brilliant eyes. "And I
Claude dropped his eyes. "Yes," he muttered, blushing, "shame could.
It pretty nearly did. We are pretty late." He rose from his chair as if he
were going to fetch something. . . . But where was he to get it from? He
shook his head. "I am afraid," he said mournfully, "there is nothing I can
say to make you understand how far away it all seemed, how
"But you do come,— so many, and from so far! It is the last miracle of this
war. I was in Paris on the fourth day of July, when your Marines, just
from Château-Thierry, marched for your national fête, and I said to myself
as they came on,
A woman came up the hill carrying a baby. Mademoiselle de Courcy
went to meet her and took her into the house. Claude sat
When his hostess came back, he moved her chair for her out of the creeping sunlight. "I didn't know there were any French girls like you," he said simply, as she sat down.
She smiled. "I do not think there are any French girls left. There are
children and women. I was twenty-one when the war came, and I had
never been anywhere without my mother or my brother or sister. Within
a year I went all over France alone; with soldiers, with Senegalese, with
anybody. Everything is different with us." She lived at Versailles, she
told him, where her father had been an instructor in the
She looked so tired that Claude knew he had no right to stay. Long
shadows were falling in the garden. It was hard to leave; but an hour
more or less wouldn't matter. Two
"Will you tell me where I can come and see you, if we both get through this war?" he asked as he rose.
He wrote it down in his notebook.
"I shall look for you," she said, giving him her hand.
There was nothing to do but to take his helmet and go. At the edge of
the hill just before he plunged down the path, be stopped and glaned
back at the garden lying flattened in the sun; the three stone arches,
the dahlias and marigolds, the
The next afternoon Claude and his sergeant set off for the front. They had been told at Headquarters that they could shorten their route by following the big road to the military cemetery, and then turning to the left. It was not advisable to go the latter half of the way before nightfall so they took their time through the belt of straggling crops and hayfields.
When they struck the road they came upon a big Highlander sitting in the end of an empty supply, wagon, smoking a pipe and rubbing the dried mud out of his kilts. The horses were munching in their nose- bags, and the driver had disappeared. The Americans hadn't happened to meet with any Highlanders before, and were curious. This one must be a good fighter, they thought; a brawny giant with a bulldog jaw, and a face as red and knobby as his knees. More because he admired the looks of the man than because he needed information, Hicks went up and asked him if he had noticed a military cemetery on the road back. The Kiltie nodded.
"About how far back would you say it was?"
"I wouldn't say at all. I take no account of their kilometers, he replied drily, rubbing away at his skirt as if he had it in a washtub.
"Well, about how long will it take us to walk it?"
"That I couldn't say. A Scotsman would do it in an hour."
"I guess a Yankee can do it as quick as a Scotchman, can't he?" Hicks asked jovially.
"That I couldn't say. You've been four years gettin' this far, I know verra well."
Hicks blinked as if he had been hit. "Oh, if that's the way you talk—"
"That's the way I do," said the other sourly.
Claude put out a warning hand. "Come on, Hicks. You'll get nothing by
it." They went up the road very much
"I don't see where you'd have come out in an argument, and you certainly couldn't have licked him."
They turned aside at the cemetery to wait until the sun went down. It was unfenced, unsodded, and a wagon trail ran through the middle, bisecting the square. On one side were the French graves, with white crosses; on the other side the German graves, with black crosses. Poppies and cornflowers ran over them. The Americans strolled about, reading the names. Here and there the soldier's photograph was nailed upon his cross, left by some comrade to perpetuate his memory a little longer.
The birds, that always came to life at dusk and dawn, began to sing,
flying home from somewhere. Claude and Hicks sat
A very good epitaph, Claude was thinking. Most of the boys who fell
in this war were unknown, even to themselves. They were too young.
They died and took their secret with them,— what they were and what
they might have been. The name that stood was Anchises. It was a
Hicks, too, had been lost in his reflections. Now he broke the silence.
"Somehow, Lieutenant, '
' seems deader than 'dead!'" It has a
coffinish sound. And over there they're all '
,' and it's all the same
damned silly thing. Look at them set out here, black and white, like a
checkerboard. The next question is, who put 'em here, and what's the
good of it?"
"Search me," the other murmured absently.
Hicks rolled another cigarette and sat smoking it, his plump face
wrinkled with the gravity and labour of his cerebration. "Well," he
brought out at last, "we'd better hike. This
"I suppose we had." They rose to go. The white crosses were now
violet, and the black ones had altogether melted in the shadow. Behind
the dead trees in the west, a long smear of red still burned. To the north,
the guns were tuning up with
"Just what I was wondering, Lieutenant. It's a peaceful spot, otherwise. Good-night, boys," said Hicks kindly, as they left the graves behind them.
They were soon finding their way among shellholes, and jumping
trench-tops in the dark,— beginning to feel
AFTER four days' rest in the rear, the Battalion went to the front again
in new country, about ten
"We are going to clear them out there in F 6 tonight, and straighten our
line. The thing that bothers us is that little village stuck up on the hill,
where the enemy machine guns have a strong position. I want to get
them out of there
Under the hill where the village stood, ran a deep ravine, and from this ravine a twisting water course wound up the hillside. By climbing this gully, the raiders should be able to fall on the machine gunners from the rear and surprise them. But first they must get across the open stretch, nearly one and a half kilometers wide, between the American line and the ravine, without attracting attention. It was raining now, and they could safely count on a dark night.
The night came on black enough. The Company crossed
the open stretch without provoking fire, and slipped into the
ravine to wait for the hour of attack. A young doctor, a
At ten o'clock the men began to ascend the water-course, creeping
through pools and little waterfalls, making a
Claude, with his group, started back. "Go into the brush and get 'em! Our fellows have got no chance down there. Grenades while they last, then bayonets. Pull your plugs and don't hold on too long."
They were already on the run, charging the brush. The Hun gunners knew the hill like a book, and when the bombs began bursting among them, they took to trails and burrows. "Don't follow them off into the rocks," Claude kept calling. "Straight ahead! Clear everything to the ravine."
As the German gunners made for cover, the firing into the
Claude and his party found themselves back at the foot of the hill, at the edge of the ravine from which they had started. Heavy firing on the hill above told them the rest of the men had got through. The quickest way back to the scene of action was by the same water-course they had climbed before. They dropped into it an started up. Claude, at the rear, felt the ground rise under him, and he was swept with a mountain of earth and rock down into the ravine.
He never knew whether he lost consciousness or not. It seemed to him that he went on having continuous sensations. The first, was that of being blown to pieces; of swelling to an enormous size under intolerable pressure, and then bursting. Next he felt himself shrink and tingle, like a frost-bitten body thawing out. Then he swelled again, and burst. This was repeated, he didn't know how often. He soon realized that he was lying under a great weight of earth;—his body, not his head. He felt rain falling on his face' His left hand was free, and still attached to his arm. He moved it cautiously to his face. He seemed to be bleeding from the nose and ears. Now he began to wonder where he was hurt; he felt as if he were full of shell splinters. Everything was buried but his head and left shoulder. A voice was calling from somewhere below.
"Are any of you fellows alive?"
Claude closed his eyes against the rain beating in his face. The same voice came again, with a note of patient despair.
"If there's anybody left alive in this hole, won't he speak up? I'm badly hurt myself."
That must be the new doctor; wasn't his dressing station
"I'm the only one left, then?" said the mournful voice below.
At last Claude worked himself out of his burrow, but he was unable to stand. Every time he tried to stand, he got faint and seemed to burst again. Something was the matter with his right ankle, too—he couldn't bear his weight on it. Perhaps he had been too near the shell to be hit; he had heard the boys tell of such cases. It had exploded under his feet and swept him down into the ravine, but hadn't left any metal in his body. If it had put anything into him, it would have put so much that he wouldn't be sitting here speculating. He began to crawl down the slope on all fours. "Is that the Doctor? Where are you?"
"Here, on a stretcher. They shelled us. Who are you? Our fellows got up, didn't they?"
"I guess most of them did. What happened back here?"
"I'm afraid it's my fault," the voice said sadly. "I used my flash light, and that must have given them the range. They put three or four shells right on top of us. The fellows that got hurt in the gully kept stringing back here, and I couldn't do anything in the dark. I had to have a light to do anything. I just finished putting on a Johnson splint when the first shell came. I guess they're all done for now."
"How many were there?"
"Fourteen, I think. Some of them weren't much hurt. They'd all be alive, if I hadn't come out with you."
"Who were they? But you don't know our names yet, do you? You didn't see Lieutenant Gerhardt among them?"
"Don't think so."
"Nor Sergeant Hicks, the fat fellow ?"
"Don't think so."
"Where are you hurt?"
"Abdominal. I can't tell anything without a light. I lost my flash light. It never occurred to me that it could make trouble; it's one I use at home, when the babies are sick," the Doctor murmured.
Claude tried to strike a match, with no success. "Wait a minute, where's your helmet?" He took off his metal hat, held it over the Doctor, and managed to strike a light underneath it. The wounded man had already loosened his, trousers, and now he pulled up his bloody shirt. His groin and abdomen were torn on the left side. The wound, and the stretcher on which he lay, supported a mass of dark, coagulated blood that looked like a great cow's liver.
"I guess I've got mine," the Doctor murmured as the match went out.
Claude struck another. "Oh, that can't be! Our fellows will be back pretty soon, and we can do something for you."
"No use, Lieutenant. Do you suppose you could strip a coat off one of those poor fellows? I feel the cold terribly in my intestines. I had a bottle of French brandy, but I suppose it's buried."
Claude stripped off his own coat, which was warm on the inside, and
began feeling about in the mud for the brandy. He wondered why the
poor man wasn't screaming with pain. The firing on the hill had ceased,
except for the occasional
Suddenly, voices above, a clatter of boots on the shale. He began shouting to them.
"Coming, coming!" He knew the voice. Gerhardt and his rifles ran down into the ravine with a bunch of prisoners. Claude called to them to be careful. "Don't strike a light! They've been shelling down here."
"All right are you, Wheeler? Where are the wounded?"
"There aren't any but the Doctor and me. Get us out of here quick. I'm all right, but I can't walk."
They put Claude on a stretcher and sent him ahead. Four big Germans
carried him, and they were prodded to a lope by Hicks and Dell Able.
Four of their own men took up the Doctor, and Gerhardt walked beside
him. In spite of their care, the motion started the blood again and tore
away the clots that bad formed over his wounds. He began to vomit
blood and to strangle. The men put the stretcher down. Gerhardt lifted
the Doctor's head. "It's over," he said presently. "
They picked up their load again. "Them that are carrying him now won't jolt him," said Oscar, the pious Swede.
B Company lost nineteen men in the raid. Two days later the Company
went off on a ten-day leave. Claude's sprained ankle was twice its natural
size, but to avoid being sent to the hospital he had to march to the
railhead. Sergeant Hicks got him a giant shoe he found stuck on the
barbed wire
A RAINY autumn night; Papa Joubert sat reading his paper. He heard a heavy pounding on his garden gate. Kicking off his slippers, he put on the wooden
sabots he kept for mud, shuffled across the dripping
"
!"
Sorry-looking soldiers they appeared when they stood in the candle-light,— plastered with clay, their metal hats shining like copper bowls, their clothes dripping pools of water upon the flags of the kitchen floor. Madame Joubert kissed their wet cheeks, and Monsieur, now that he could see them, embraced them again. Whence had they come, and how had it fared with them, up there? Very well, as anybody could see. What did they want first,— supper, perhaps? Their room was always ready for them; and the clothes they had left were in the big chest.
David explained that their shirts had not once been dry for four days; and
what they most desired was to be dry and to be clean. Old Martha, already
in bed, was routed out to heat water. Monsieur Joubert carried the big
washtub upstairs. Tomorrow for conversation, he said; tonight for repose.
The boys followed him and began to peel off their wet uniforms,
When they were clad in clean pyjamas out of the chest, Papa Joubert
carried their shirts and socks down for Martha to wash. He returned with
the big meat platter, on which was an omelette made of twelve eggs and
stuffed with bacon and fried potatoes. Madame Joubert brought the three-
story earthen coffee-pot to the door and called, "
!" The host
poured the coffee and cut up the loaf with his clasp knife. He sat, down to
watch them eat. How had they found things up there, anyway? The
Boches polite and agreeable as usual? Finally, when there was not a crumb
of anything left, he poured for each a little glass of brandy, "
," and wished them good-night. He took the candle with him.
Perfect bliss, Claude reflected, as the chill of the sheets grew warm around
his body, and he sniffed in the pillow the old smell of lavender. To be so
warm, so dry, so clean, so
THE woodland path was deep in leaves. Claude and David were lying on
the dry, springy heather among the flint boulders. Gerhardt, with his
Stetson over his eyes, was presumably asleep. They were having fine
weather for their holiday. The forest rose about this open glade like an
amphitheatre, in golden terraces of horsechestnut and beech. The big
nuts dropped velvety and brown, as if they had been soaked in oil, and
disappeared in the dry leaves below. Little black yew trees, that had not
been visible in the green of
It was the Wheeler way to dread false happiness, to feel cowardly about being fooled. Since he had come back, Claude had more than once wondered whether he took too much for granted and felt more at home here than he had any right to feel. The Americans were prone, he had observed, to make themselves very much at home, to mistake good manners for goodwill. He had no right to doubt the affection of the Jouberts, however; that was genuine and personal— not a smooth surface under which almost any shade of scorn might lie and laugh was not, in short, the treacherous "French politeness" by which one must not let oneself be taken in. Merely having seen the season change in a country gave one the sense of having been there for a long time. And, anyway, he wasn't a tourist. He was here on legitimate business.
Claude's sprained ankle was still badly swollen. Madame
"You know we are to join the Battalion at A——. They'll be living like
kings there. Hicks will get so fat he'll drop over on the march.
Headquarters must have something particularly nasty in mind; the
infantry is always fed up before a slaughter. But I've been thinking; I
have some old friends at A——.
Claude did not answer at once. He lay squinting off at the beech trees, without moving. "You always avoid that subject with me, don't you?" he said presently.
"What subject?"
"Oh, anything to do with the Conservatoire, or your profession."
"I haven't any profession at present. I'll never go back to the violin."
"Yon mean you couldn't make up for the time you'll lose?"
Gerhardt settled his back against a rock and got out his pipe. "That would be difficult; but other things would be harder. I've lost much more than time."
"Couldn't you have got exemption, one way or another?"
"I might have. My friends wanted to take it up and make a test case of me. But I couldn't stand for it. I didn't feel I was a good enough violinist to admit that I wasn't a man. I often wish I had been in Paris that summer when the war broke out; then I would have gone into the French army on the first impulse, with the other students, and it would have been better."
David paused and sat puffing at his pipe. Just then a soft movement
stirred the brakes on the hillside. A little barefoot girl stood there,
looking about. She had heard voices, but at first did not see the
uniforms that blended with the yellow and brown of the wood. Then she
saw the sun shining on two heads; one square, and amber in colour,—
the other reddish
"
!" she exclaimed, her face expressing the liveliest terror, "
!" These inexperienced Americans might eat almost anything. The
boys laughed and gave her some pennies, "
." She
stole about the edge of the wood, stirring among the leaves for nuts, and
watching the two soldiers.
Gerhardt knocked out his pipe and began to fill it again. "I went home to see my mother in May, of 1914. I wasn't here when the war broke out. The Conservatoire closed at once, so I arranged a concert tour in the States that winter, and did very well. That was before all the little Russians went over, and the field wasn't so crowded. I had a second season, and that went well. But I was getting more nervous all the time; I was only half there." He smoked thoughtfully, sitting with folded arms, as if he were going over a succession of events or states of feeling. "When my number was drawn, I reported to see what I could do about getting out; I took a look at the other fellows who were trying to squirm, and chucked it. I've never been sorry. Not long afterward, my violin was smashed, and my career seemed to go along with it."
Claude asked him what he meant.
"While I was at Camp Dix, I had to play at one of the
Claude watched his brooding head against the grey flint rock.
"You ought to have kept out of the whole thing. Any army man would say so."
David's head went back against the boulder, and he threw one of the chestnuts lightly into the air. "Oh, one violinist more or less doesn't matter! But who is ever going back to anything? That's what I want to know!"
Claude felt guilty; as if David must have guessed what apostasy had been going on in his own mind this afternoon. "You don't believe we are going to get out of this war what we went in for, do you?" he asked suddenly.
"Absolutely not," the other replied with cool indifference.
"Then I certainly don't see what you're here for!"
"Because in 1917 I was twenty-four years old, and able to bear arms. The
war was put up to our generation. I don't know what for; the sins of our
fathers, probably. Certainly not to make the world safe for Democracy, or
any rhetoric of that sort. When I was doing stretcher work, I had to tell
myself over and over that nothing would come of it, but that it had to be.
Sometimes, though, I think something must. . . . Nothing we expect, but
something unforeseen." He paused and shut his eyes. "You remember in
the old mythology tales how, when the sons of the gods were born, the
mothers always died in agony? Maybe it's only Semele I'm thinking of. At
any rate, I've sometimes wondered whether the young men of our time had
to die to bring a new idea into the world . . .
Claude was confused by this quiet question. "I hardly know. I've never been able to make up my mind."
"Oh, don't bother about it! If it comes to you, it comes. You don't have to
go after it. I arrived at it in quite the same way I used to get things in art,—
knowing them and living on them before I understood them. Such ideas
used to seem
He disappeared among the red pine stems, where the
The little girl on the edge of the beechwood left her sack and stole quietly down the hill. Sitting in the heather and drawing her feet up under her, she stayed still for a long time, and regarded with curiosity the relaxed, deep-breathing body of the American soldier.
The next day was Claude's twenty-fifth birthday, and in honour of that event Papa Joubert produced a bottle of old Burgundy from his cellar, one of a few dozens he had laid in for great occasions when he was a young man.
During that week of idleness at Madame Joubert's, Claude often thought
that the period, of happy "youth," about which his old friend Mrs. Erlich
used to talk, and which he had never experienced, was being made up to
him now. He was having
One night he dreamed that he was at home; out in the ploughed fields, where he could see nothing but the furrowed brown earth, stretching from horizon to horizon. Up and down it moved a boy, with a plough and two horses. At first he thought it was his brother Ralph; but on coming nearer, he saw it was himself,— and he was full of fear for this boy. Poor Claude, he would never, never get away; he was going to miss everything! While he was struggling to speak to Claude, and warn him, he awoke.
In the years when he went to school in Lincoln, he was always hunting for some one whom he could admire without reservations; some one he could envy, emulate, wish to be. Now he believed that even then he must have had some faint image of a man like Gerhardt in his mind. It was only in war times that their paths would have been likely to cross; or that they would have had anything to do together . . . any of the common interests that make men friends.
GERHARDT and Claude Wheeler alighted from a taxi before the open gates of a square-roofed, solid-looking house, where all the shutters on the front were closed, and the tops of many trees showed above the garden wall. They crossed a paved court and rang at the door. An old valet admitted the young men, and took them through a wide hall to the salon, which I opened on the garden. Madame and Mademoiselle would be down very soon. David went to one of the long windows and looked out. "They have kept it up, in spite of everything. It was always lovely here."
The garden was spacious— like a little park. On one side was a tennis
court, on the other a fountain, with a pool and water-lilies. The north
wall was hidden by ancient yews; on the South two rows of plane trees,
cut square, made a long arbour. At the back of the garden there were
fine old lindens. The gravel walks wound about beds of gorgeous
autumn
Two ladies entered the drawing-room. The mother was short, plump, and rosy, with strong, rather masculine features and yellowish white hair. The tears flashed into her eyes as David bent to kiss her hand, and she embraced him and touched both his cheeks with her lips.
"
!" she murmured, touching the coat of his uniform
with her fingers. There was but a moment of softness. She gathered
herself up like an old general,
The Americans found themselves in a large room upstairs, where two
modern iron beds stood out conspicuous among heavy mahogany
bureaus and desks and dressing-tables, stuffed chairs and velvet
carpets and dull red brocade window
"Aren't you going to change?" he asked, noticing that Claude stood stiff and unbending by the window, looking down into the garden.
"Why should I?" said Claude scornfully. "I don't play
"Too bad. She used to play very well, though she was only a youngster
then." Gerhardt was regarding his legs in
"They don't give you much time to dream, I should say!" Claude remarked.
"Fortunately!"
"Explain to the girl that I don't play, will you? I'll be down later."
"As you like."
"Claude stood in the window, watching Gerhardt's bare head and Mademoiselle Claire's green hat and long brown arm go bounding about over the court.
When Gerhardt came to change before tea, he found his fellow officer standing. before his bag, which was open, but not unpacked.
"What's the matter? Feeling shell shock again?"
"Not exactly." Claude bit his lip. "The fact is, Dave, I don't feel just comfortable here. Oh, the people are all right! But I'm out of place. I'm going to pull out and get a billet somewhere else, and let you visit your friends in peace. Why should I be here? These people don't keep a hotel."
"They very nearly do, from what they've been telling me. They've had a string of Scotch and English quartered on them. They like it, too, or have the good manners to pretend they do. Of course, you'll do as you like, but you'll hurt their feelings and put me in an awkward position. To be frank, I don't see how you can go away without being distinctly rude."
Claude stood looking down at the contents of his bag in an irresolute attitude. Catching a glimpse of his face in one of the big mirrors, Gerhardt saw that he looked perplexed and miserable. His flash of temper died, and he put his hand lightly on his friend's shoulder.
"Come on, Claude! This is too absurd. You don't even have to dress, thanks to your uniform,—and you don't have to talk, since you're not supposed to know the language. I thought you'd like coming here. These people have had an awfully rough time; can't you admire their pluck?"
"Oh, yes, I do! It's awkward for me, though." Claude pulled off his coat and began to brush his hair vigorously. "I guess I've always been more afraid of the French than of the Germans. It takes courage to stay, you understand. I want to run."
"But why? What makes you want to?"
"Oh, I don't know! Something in the house, in the
"Something disagreeable?"
"No. Something agreeable."
David laughed. "Oh, you'll get over that!"
They had tea in the garden, English fashion—English tea, too, Mademoiselle Claire informed them, left by the English officers.
At dinner a third member of the family was introduced, a little boy with a cropped head and big black eyes. He sat on Claude's left, quiet and shy in his velvet jacket, though he followed the conversation eagerly, especially when it touched upon his brother René, killed at Verdun in the second winter of the war. The mother and sister talked about him as if he were living, about his letters and his plans, and his friends at the Conservatoire and in the Army.
Mademoiselle Claire told Gerhardt news of all the girl students he had
known in Paris: how this one was singing for the soldiers; another, when
she was nursing in a hospital which was bombed in an air raid, had
carried twenty wounded men out of the
After dinner, when they went into the salon, Madame Fleury asked David whether he would like to see René's violin again, and nodded to the little boy. He slipped away and returned carrying the case, which he placed on the table. He opened it carefully and took off the velvet cloth, as if this was his peculiar office, then handed the instrument to Gerhardt.
David turned it over under the candles, telling Madame Fleury that he
would have known it anywhere, René's
"What is it, Lucien?" his mother asked.
"If Monsieur David would be so good as to play before I must go to bed—" he murmured entreatingly.
"But, Lucien, I am a soldier now. I have not worked at all for two years. The Amati would think it had fallen into the hands of a Boche."
Lucien smiled. "Oh, no! It is too intelligent for that. A little, please," and he sat down on a footstool before the sofa in confident anticipation.
Mademoiselle Claire went to the piano. David frowned and began to tune the violin. Madame Fleury called the old servant and told him to light the sticks that lay in the fireplace. She took the arm-chair at the right of the hearth and motioned Claude to a seat on the left. The little boy kept his stool at the other end of the room. Mlle. Claire began the orchestral introduction to the Saint-Saëns concerto.
"Oh, not that!" David lifted his chin and looked at her in perplexity.
She made no reply, but played on, her shoulders bent
They played for a long while. At last David stopped and wiped his forehead. "I'm afraid I can't do anything with the third movement, really."
"Nor can I. But that was the last thing René played on it, the night before
he went away, after his last leave." She
Gerhardt wrapped the violin up in its cloth. The little boy thanked him and carried it away. Madame Fleury and her daughter wished their guests good-night.
David said he was warm, and suggested going into the garden to smoke before they went to bed. He opened one of the long windows and they stepped out on the terrace. Dry leaves were rustling down on the walks; the yew trees made a solid wall, blacker than the darkness. The fountain must have caught the starlight; it was the only shining thing—a little clear column of twinkling silver. The boys strolled in silence to the end of the walk.
"I guess you'll go back to your profession, all right," Claude remarked, in the unnatural tone in which people sometimes speak of things they know nothing about.
"Not I. Of course, I had to play for them. Music has always been like a religion in this house. Listen," he put up his hand; far away the regular pulsation of the big guns sounded through the still night. "That's all that matters now. It has killed everything else."
"I don't believe it." Claude stopped for a moment by the
"You'll admit it's a costly way of providing adventure for the young," said David drily.
"Maybe so; all the same . . ."
Claude pursued the argument to himself long after they were in their luxurious beds and David was asleep. No battlefield or shattered country he had seen was as ugly as this world would be if men like his brother Bayliss controlled it altogether. Until the war broke out, he had supposed they did control it; his boyhood had been clouded and enervated by that belief. The Prussians had believed it too, apparently. But the event had shown that there were a great many people left who cared about something else.
The intervals of the distant artillery fire grew shorter, as if the big guns
were tuning up, choking to get something out. Claude sat up in his bed
and listened. The sound of the guns had from the first been pleasant to
him, had given him a feeling of confidence and safety; tonight he knew
why. What they said was, that men could still die for an idea; and would
burn all they had made to keep their dreams. He knew the future of the
world was safe; the careful planners would never be able to put it into a
strait-jacket,—cunning and prudence would never have it to themselves.
Why, that little boy
WHEN Claude and David rejoined their Battalion on the 20th of September, the end of the war looked as far away as ever. The collapse of Bulgaria was unknown to the American army, and their acquaintance with European affairs was so slight that this would have meant very little to them had they heard of it. The German army still held the north and east of France, and no one could say how much vitality was left in that sprawling body.
The Battalion entrained at Arras. Lieutenant Colonel Scott had orders to proceed to the railhead, and then advance on foot into the Argonne.
The cars were crowded, and the railway journey was long and fatiguing. They detrained at night, in the rain, at what the men said seemed to be the jumping-off place. There was no town, and the railway station had been bombed the day before, by an air fleet out to explode artillery ammunition. A mound of brick, and holes full of water told where it had been. The Colonel sent Claude out with a patrol to find some place for the men to sleep. The patrol came upon a field of strawstacks, and at the end of it found a black farmhouse.
Claude went up and hammered on the door. Silence. He kept hammering and calling, "The Americans are here!" A shutter opened. The farmer stuck his head out and demanded gruffly what was wanted; "What now?"
Claude explained in his best French that an American
"Sure," replied the farmer, and shut the window.
That one word, coming out of the dark in such an
The farmer came out to offer his stable to the officers, and to beg them not on any account to make a light. They had never been bothered here by air raids until yesterday, and it must be because the Americans were coming and were sending in ammunition.
Gerhardt, who was called to talk to him, told the farmer the Colonel must study his map, and for that the man took them down into the cellar, where the children were asleep. Before he lay down on the straw bed his orderly had made for him, the Colonel kept telling names and kilometers off on his fingers. For officers like Colonel Scott the names of places constituted one of the real hardships of the war. His mind worked slowly, but it was always on his job, and he could go without sleep for more hours together than any of his officers. Tonight he had scarcely lain down, when a sentinel brought in a runner with a message. The Colonel had to go into the cellar again to read it. He was to meet Colonel Harvey at Prince Joachim farm, as early as possible tomorrow morning. The runner would act as guide.
The Colonel sat with his eye on his watch, and interrogated the messenger
about the road and the time it would take to get
"That's as it happens, sir. Sometimes we nab a night patrol of a dozen or fifteen and send them to the rear under a one-man guard. Then, again, a little bunch of Heinies will fight like the devil. They say it depends on what part of Germany they come from; the Bavarians and Saxons are the bravest."
Colonel Scott waited for an hour, and then went about,
"Yes, sir." Captain Maxey sprang to his feet as if he had been caught in a
disgraceful act. He called his sergeants, and they began to beat the men
up out of the strawstacks and
This was the Battalion's first march over really bad roads, where walking was a question of pulling and balancing. They were soon warm, at any rate; it kept them sweating. The weight of their equipment was continually thrown in the wrong place. Their wet clothing dragged them back, their packs got twisted and cut into their shoulders. Claude and Hicks began wondering to each other what it must have been like in the real mud, up about Ypres and Paschendael, two years ago. Hicks had been training at Arras last week, where a lot of Tommies were "resting" in the same way, and he had tales to tell.
The Battalion got to Joachim farm at nine o'clock. Colonel Harvey had not
yet come up, but old Julius Caesar was there with his engineers, and he
had a hot breakfast ready for them. At six o'clock in the evening they took
the road again,
It was Gerhardt, of course, who had to go over and question them.
Claude felt sorry for the prisoners; they were so
They begged Gerhardt to be allowed to do something. Couldn't they
carry the officers' equipment on the march? No, they were too buggy;
they might relieve the sanitary squad. Oh, that they would gladly do,
!
The plan was to get to Rupprecht trench and take it before nightfall. It
was easy taking—empty of everything but
After supper the men fell on their packs and began to lighten them, throwing away all that was not necessary, and much that was. Many of them abandoned the new overcoats that had been served out at the railhead; others cut off the skirts and made the coats into ragged jackets. Captain Maxey was horrified at these depredations, but the Colonel advised him to shut his eyes. "They've got hard going before them; let them travel light. If they'd rather stand the cold, they've got a right to choose."
THE Battalion had twenty-four hours' rest at Rupprecht trench, and
then pushed on for four days and nights, stealing trenches, capturing
patrols, with only a few hours' sleep,—snatched by the roadside while
their food was being prepared. They pushed hard after a retiring foe,
and
This farmhouse, for some reason called by the prisoners Frau Hulda farm, was a nest of telephone wires; hundreds of them ran out through the walls, in all directions. The Colonel cut those he could find, and then put a guard over the old peasant who had been left in charge of the house, suspecting that he was in the pay of the enemy.
At last Colonel Scott got into the Headquarters bed, large and lumpy,— the first one he had seen since he left Arras. He had not been asleep more than two hours, when a runner arrived with orders from the Regimental Colonel. Claude was in a bed in the loft, between Gerhardt and Bruger. He felt somebody shaking him, but resolved that be wouldn't be disturbed and went on placidly sleeping. Then somebody pulled his hair,— so hard that he sat up. Captain Maxey was standing over the bed.
"Come along, boys. Orders from Regimental Headquarters.
Claude rose. "The men are pretty well beat out, Captain Maxey, and they had no supper."
"That can't be helped. Tell them we are to be in Beaufort for breakfast."
Claude and Gerhardt went out to the barn and roused Hicks and his pal,
Dell Able. The men were asleep in dry straw, for the first time in ten
days. They were completely worn out, lost to time and place. Many of
them were already four thousand miles away, scattered among little
towns and farms on the prairie. They were a miserable looking lot as
they got
After the Colonel had gone over the map with Captain Maxey, he came out and saw the Company assembled. He wasn't going with them, he told them, but he expected them to give a good account of themselves. Once in Beaufort, they would have a week's rest; sleep under cover, and live among people for awhile.
The men took the road, some with their eyes shut, trying to make believe they were still asleep, trying to have their agreeable dreams over again, as they marched. They did not really waken up until the advance challenged a Hun patrol, and sent it back to the Colonel under a one-man guard. When they had advanced two kilometers, they found the bridge blown up. Claude and Hicks went in one direction to look for a ford, Bruger and Dell Able in the other, and the men lay down by the roadside and slept heavily. Just at dawn they reached the outskirts of the village, silent and still.
Captain Maxey had no information as to how many Germans
At the first house on the road, the Captain stopped and pounded. No answer.
"We are Americans, and must see the people of the house. If you don't open, we must break the door."
A woman's voice called: "There is nobody here. Go away, please, and take your men away. I am sick."
The Captain called Gerhardt, who began to explain and
No, there were no Boches left in her house. They had got orders to leave day before yesterday, and had blown up the bridge. They were concentrating. somewhere to the east. She didn't know how many were still in the village, nor where they were, but she could tell the Captain where they had been. Triumphantly she brought out a map of the town— lost, she said with a meaning smile, by a German officer—on which the billets were marked.
With this to guide them, Captain Maxey and his men went on up the
street. They took eight prisoners in one cellar, seventeen in another.
When the villagers saw the prisoners bunched together in the square,
they came out of their houses and gave information. This cleaning up,
Bert Fuller
At nine o'clock the officers were standing together in the square before
the church, checking off on the map the houses that had been
searched. The men were drinking coffee, and eating fresh bread from a
bakers, shop. The square was full of people who had come out to see
for themselves. Some believed that deliverance had come, and others
shook their heads and held back, suspecting another trick. A crowd of
children were running about, making friends with the soldiers. One little
girl with yellow curls and a clean white dress had attached herself to
Hicks, and was eating chocolate out of his pocket. Gerhardt was
bargaining with the baker for another baking of bread. The sun was
shining, for a change—
Suddenly a shot rang out above the chatter, and an old woman in a
white cap screamed and tumbled over on the
"There it is, to the left!" Hicks shouted, pointing. They saw now. From a closed house, some distance down a street off the square, smoke was coming. It hung before one of the upstairs windows. The Captain's orderly dragged him into a wineshop. Claude and David, followed by the men, ran down the street and broke in the door. The two officers went through the rooms on the first floor, while Hicks and his lot made straight for an enclosed stairway at the back of the house.
As they reached the foot of the stairs, they were met by a volley of rifle shots, and two of the men tumbled over. Four Germans were stationed at the head of the steps.
The Americans scarcely knew whether their bullets or their bayonets got to the Huns first; they were not conscious of going up, till they were there. When Claude and David reached the landing, the squad were wiping their bayonets, and four grey bodies were piled in the corner.
Bert Fuller and Dell Able ran down the narrow hallway and threw open the door into the room on the street. Two shots, and Dell came back with his jaw shattered and the blood spouting from the left side of his neck. Gerhardt caught him, and tried to close the artery with his fingers.
"How many are in there, Bert?" Claude called.
"I couldn't see. Look out, sir! You can't get through that door more than two at a time!"
The door still stood open, at the end of the corridor. Claude went down
the steps until he could sight along the floor of the passage, into the
front room. The shutters were closed in there, and the sunlight came
through the slats. In the middle of the floor, between the door and the
windows, stood a tall chest
"There's only one fellow in there, I guess. He's shooting from behind a big dresser in the middle of the room. Come on, one of you, we'll have to go in and get him."
Willy Katz, the Austrian boy from the Omaha packing house, stepped up and stood beside him.
"Now, Willy, we'll both go in at once; you jump to the right, and I to the left,—and one of us will jab him. He can't shoot both ways at once. Are you ready? All right— Now!"
Claude thought he was taking the more dangerous position himself, but the German probably reasoned that the important man would be on the right. As the two Americans dashed through the door, he fired. Claude caught him in the back with his bayonet, under the shoulder blade, but Willy Katz had got the bullet in his brain, through one of his blue eyes. He fell, and never stirred. The German officer fired his revolver again as he went down, shouting in English, English with no foreign accent,
"You swine, go back to Chicago!" Then he began
Sergeant Hicks ran in and shot the dying man through the temples. Nobody stopped him.
The officer was a tall man, covered with medals and orders;
must have been very handsome. His linen and his hands were
as white as if he were going to a ball. On the dresser were
the files and paste and buffers with which he had kept his nails
"Think I'd touch anything of his? That beautiful little girl, and my buddy— He's worse than dead, Dell is, worse!" He turned his back on his comrades so that they wouldn't see him cry.
"Can I keep it myself, sir?" Bert asked.
Claude nodded. David had come in, and was opening the shutters. This
officer, Claude was thinking, was a very
Claude studied it, wondering. "It looks like a poet, or something. Probably a kid brother, killed at the beginning of the war."
Gerhardt took it and glanced at it with a disdainful
Claude noticed that David looked at him as if he were very much
pleased with him,— looked, indeed, as if something
WHEN the survivors of Company B are old men, and are telling
over their good days, they will say to each other, "Oh, that week we
spent at Beaufort!" They will close their eyes and see a little village on
a low ridge, lost in the forest, overgrown with oak and chestnut and
black walnut . . . buried in autumn colour, the streets drifted deep in
autumn leaves, great branches interlacing over the roofs of the houses,
wells of cool water that tastes of moss and tree roots. Up and down
those streets they will see figures passing; themselves, young and
brown and clean-limbed; and
As soon as Captain Maxey and the wounded men had been started on their long journey to the rear, carried by the prisoners, the whole company turned in and slept for twelve hours— all but Sergeant Hicks, who sat in the house off the square, beside the body of his chum.
The next day the Americans came to life as if they were new men, just
created in a new world. And the people of the town came to life . . . excitement, change, something to look
"
!" made the soldiers realize how far and how long out of the
world these villagers had been. The
Before Claude was out of bed after his first long sleep, a runner arrived
from Colonel Scott, notifying him that he was in charge of the Company
until further orders. The German prisoners bad buried their own dead and
dug graves for the Americans before they were sent off to the rear.
Claude and David were billeted at the edge of the town, with the woman
who had given Captain Maxey his first information, when they marched
in yesterday morning. Their hostess told them, at their mid-day
breakfast, that the old dame who was shot in the square, and the little
girl, were to be buried this afternoon. Claude decided that the Americans
might as well have their funeral at the same time. He thought he would
ask the priest to say a prayer at the graves, and he and David set off
through the brilliant, rustling autumn sunshine to find the Curé's house.
It was next the church, with a high-walled "
."
The priest himself came out to them, an old man who seemed weak like
his doorbell. He stood in his black cap, holding his hands against his
breast to keep them from shaking, and looked
"He seems a little gone in the head, don't you think?" Claude remarked.
"I suppose the war has used him up. How can he celebrate mass when his hands quiver so?" As they crossed the church steps, David touched Claude's arm and pointed into the square. "Look, every doughboy has a girl already! Some of them have trotted out fatigue caps! I supposed they'd thrown them all away!"
Those who had no caps stood with their helmets under their arms, in attitudes of exaggerated gallantry, talking to the women,— who seemed all to have errands abroad. Some of them let the boys carry their baskets. One soldier was giving a delighted little girl a ride on his back.
After the funeral every man in the Company found some sympathetic woman to talk to about his fallen comrades. All the garden flowers and bead wreaths in Beaufort had been carried out and put on the American graves. When the squad fired over them and the bugle sounded, the girls and their mothers wept. Poor Willy Katz, for instance, could never have had such a funeral in South Omaha.
The next night the soldiers began teaching the girls to dance the "Pas
Seul" and the "Fausse Trot." They had found an old violin in the town;
and Oscar, the Swede, scraped away on
"Did you know, sir," said Bert Fuller breathlessly as he
One couldn't walk out of an evening without meeting
"
"You know, Wheeler," David remarked one morning as they were
shaving, "I think Maxey would come back here on one leg
"Maybe."
"Aren't you going to put a stop to them?"
"Not I!" Claude jerked, setting the corners of his mouth grimly. "If the girls, or their people, make complaint to me, I'll interfere. Not otherwise. I've thought the matter over."
"Oh, the girls—" David laughed softly. "Well, it's something to acquire a taste for mushrooms. They don't get them at home, do they?"
When, after eight days, the Americans had orders to march, there was mourning in every house. On their last night in town, the officers received pressing invitations to the dance in the square. Claude went for a few moments, and looked on. David was dancing every dance, but Hicks was nowhere to be seen. The poor fellow had been out of everything. Claude went over to the church to see whether he might be moping in the graveyard.
There, as he walked about, Claude stopped to look at a grave that stood off by itself, under a privet hedge, with withered leaves and a little French flag on it. The old woman with whom they stayed had told them the story of this grave.
The Curé's niece was buried there. She was the prettiest girl in
Beaufort, it seemed, and she had a love affair with a German officer and
disgraced the town. He was a young Bavarian, quartered with this
same old woman who told them the story, and she said he was a nice
boy, handsome and gentle, and used to sit up half the night in the
garden with his head in his hands—homesick, lovesick. He was always
after this Marie Louise; never pressed her, but was always there, grew
up
"And the Bavarian?" Claude asked David later. The story had become so complicated he could not follow it.
"He justified her, and promptly. He took the same pistol and shot himself
through the temples. His orderly, stationed at the edge of the thicket to
keep watch, heard the first shot and ran toward them. He saw the officer
take up the smoking pistol and turn it on himself. But the Kommandant
couldn't believe that one of his officers had so much feeling. He held an
It would stir anybody, Claude reflected. There was her lonely little grave,
the shadow of the privet hedge falling across it. There, at the foot of the
Cure's garden, was the German cemetery, with heavy cement crosses,—
some of them with long inscriptions; lines from their poets, and couplets
from old hymns. Lieutenant Müller was there somewhere, probably.
Strange, how their story stood out in a world of suffering. That was a kind
of misery he hadn't happened to think of
Claude recognized David crossing the pavement in front of the church, and went back to meet him.
"Hello! I mistook you for Hicks at first. I thought he might be out here." David sat down on the steps and lit a cigarette.
"So did I. I came out to look for him."
"Oh, I expect he's found some shoulder to cry on. Do you realize, Claude, you and I are the only men in the Company who haven't got engaged? Some of the married men have got engaged twice. It's a good thing we're pulling out, or we'd have banns and a bunch of christenings to look after."
"All the same," murmured Claude, "I like the women of this country, as far as I've seen them." While they sat smoking in silence, his mind went back to the quiet scene he bad watched on the steps of that other church, on his first night in France; the country girl in the moonlight, bending over her sick soldier.
When they walked back across the square, over the
"
," said David. "Well, tomorrow we'll be gone, and the
chances are we won't come back this way."
"WITH us it's always a feast or a famine," the men groaned, when they sat down by the road to munch dry biscuit at noon. They had covered eighteen miles that morning, and had still seven more to go. They were ordered to do the twenty-five miles in eight hours. Nobody had fallen out yet, but some of the boys looked pretty well wilted. Nifty Jones said he was done for. Sergeant Hicks was expostulating with the faint- hearted. He knew that if one man fell out, a dozen would.
"If I can do it, you can. It's worse on a fat man like me. This is no march to make a fuss about. Why, at Arras I talked with a little Tommy from one of those Pal Battalions that got slaughtered on the Somme. His battalion marched twenty-five miles in six hours, in the heat of July, into certain death. They were all kids out of school, not a man of them over five-foot-three, called them the 'Bantams.' You've got to hand it to them, fellows."
"I'll hand anything to anybody, but I can't go no farther on these," Jones muttered, nursing his sore feet.
"Oh, you! We're going to heave you onto the only horse in the Company. The officers, they can walk!"
When they got into Battalion lines there was food ready for them, but very few wanted it. They drank and lay down in the bushes. Claude went at once to Headquarters and found Barclay Owens, of the Engineers, with the Colonel, who was smoking and studying his maps as usual.
"Glad to see you, Wheeler. Your men ought to be in good shape, after a
week's rest. Let them sleep now. We've got to move out of here before
midnight, to relieve two Texas
"Very well, sir. I'll do my best."
"I'm sure you will. Two machine gun teams are going up with us, and some time tomorrow a Missouri battalion comes up to support. I'd have had you over here before, but I only got my orders to relieve yesterday. We may have to advance under shell fire. The enemy has been putting a lot of big stuff over; he wants to cut off that trench."
Claude and David got into a fresh shell hole, under the half-burned scrub, and fell asleep. They were awakened at dusk by heavy artillery fire from the north.
At ten o'clock the Battalion, after a hot meal, began to
"Know anything about that light over there, Wheeler?" he
"Put out that light," called the Colonel sharply. "What's the matter, Captain Brace?"
A young man rose quickly. "I'm waiting for the water, sir. It's coming up on mules, in petrol cases, and I don't want to get separated from it. The ground's so bad here the drivers are likely to get lost."
"Don't wait more than twenty minutes. You must get up and take your position on time, that's the important thing, water or no water."
As the Colonel and Claude hurried back to overtake the
"That light back there was just enough to give them an idea," the Colonel muttered.
The bad ground continued for about a mile, and then the advance
reached Headquarters, behind the eighth trench of the great system of
trenches. It was an old farmhouse which the Germans had made over
with reinforced concrete, lining it
"A Company is ready to go into position, sir. I brought them up."
"Where is Captain Brace, Lieutenant?"
"He and both our first lieutenants were killed, Colonel. Back in that hole. A shell fell on them not five minutes after you were talking to them."
"That's bad. Any other damage?"
"Yes, sir. There was a cook wagon struck at the same time; the first one
coming along Julius Caesar's new road. The driver was killed, and we
had to shoot the horses.
The Colonel called in the officers one after another and
"Wheeler," he said when Claude's turn came, "you know your map? You've noticed that sharp loop in the front trench, in H 2;—the Boar's Head, I believe they call it. It's a sort of spear point that reaches out toward. the enemy, and it will be a hot place to hold. If I put your company in there, do you think you can do the Battalion credit in case of a counter attack?"
Claude said he thought so.
"It's the nastiest bit of the line to hold, and you can tell your men I pay them a compliment when I put them there."
"All right, sir. They'll appreciate it."
The Colonel bit off the end of a fresh cigar. "They'd
The Texas men whom the Battalion came up to relieve had
"Sorry to leave such a mess for you to clean up, sir, but we got it bad in here. He's been shelling us every night since we drove him out. I couldn't ask the men to do anything but hold on."
"That's all right. You beat it, with your boys, quick! My men will hand you out some grub as you go back."
The battered defenders of the Boar's Head stumbled past them through
the darkness into the communication. When the last man had filed out,
the Colonel sent for Barclay Owens. Claude and David tried to feel their
way about and get some idea of the condition the place was in. The
stench was the worst they had yet encountered, but it was less
glup, glup, glup.
The boys went back to the Colonel, who was standing at the mouth of the communication, and told him there was noting much to report, except that the burying squad was needed badly.
"I expect!" The Colonel shook his head. When Barclay Owens arrived, he asked him what could be done here before daybreak. The doughty engineer felt his way about as Claude and Gerhardt had done; they heard him coughing, and beating off the flies. But when he came back he seemed rather cheered than discouraged.
"Give me a gang to get the casualties out, and with plenty of quick-lime and concrete I can make this loop all right in four hours, sir," he declared.
"I've brought plenty of lime, but where'll you get your
"The Hun left about fifty sacks of it in the cellar, under your Headquarters. I can do better, of course, if I have a few hours more for my concrete to dry."
"Go ahead, Captain." The Colonel told Claude and David to bring their men up to the communication before light, and hold them ready." Give Owen's cement a chance, but don't let the enemy put over any surprise on you."
The shelling began again at daybreak; it was hardest on the rear
trenches and the three-mile area behind. Evidently the enemy felt sure
of what he had in Moltke trench; he wanted to cut off supplies and
possible reinforcements. The Missouri battalion did not come up that
day, but before noon a runner arrived from their colonel, with
information that they
When B Company moved into the Boar's Head at one o'clock in the
afternoon, they could truthfully say that the prevailing smell was now
that of quick-lime. The parapet was evenly built up, the firing step had
been partly restored, and in the Snout there were good emplacements
for the
"Look," said Jones when he wakened his Sergeant. "The first thing I seen when daylight come was his old fingers, wigglin' in the breeze. He wants air, Heinie does; he won't stay covered."
Hicks got up and re-buried the hand himself, but when he
The Colonel sent for Claude and Gerhardt to come to
While the Colonel and the officers were at breakfast, a
"Yes, sir, it's in German, but it's code stuff. It's a German nursery rhyme. Those reconnoitering planes must have dropped scouts on our rear, and they are sending in reports. Of course, they can get more on us than the air men can. Here, do you want these birds, Dick?"
The boy grinned. "You bet I do, sir! I may get a chance to fry 'em, later on."
After breakfast the Colonel went to inspect B Company in the Boar's
Head. He was especially pleased with the
They had, indeed, a quiet day. Some of the men played
Claude and Gerhardt were consulting together when the smoke and darkness began to take on the livid colour that announced the coming of daybreak. A messenger ran in from the Colonel; the Missourians had not yet come up, and his telephone communication with them was cut off. He was afraid they had got lost in the bombardment. "The Colonel says you are to send two men back to bring them up; two men who can take charge if they're stampeded."
When the messenger shouted this order, Gerhardt and Hicks looked at each other quickly, and volunteered to go.
Claude hesitated. Hicks and David waited for no further consent; they ran down the communication and disappeared.
Claude stood in the smoke that was slowly growing greyer, and looked
after them with the deepest stab of despair he had ever known. Only a
man who was bewildered and unfit to be in command of other men
would have let his best friend and his best officer take such a risk. He
was standing there under
Claude turned and went back into the loop. Well,
An hour dragged by. Hard on the nerves, waiting. Up the
communication came a train with ammunition and coffee for the loop.
The men thought Headquarters did pretty well to get hot food to them
through that barrage. A message came up in the Colonel's hand:
Be ready when the barrage stops.
Claude took this up and showed it to the machine gunners in the Snout. Turning back, he ran into Hicks, stripped to his shirt and trousers, as wet as if he had come out of the river, and splashed with blood. His hand was wrapped up in a rag. He put his mouth to Claude's ear and shouted: "We found them. They were lost. They're coming. Send word to the Colonel."
"Where's Gerhardt?"
"He's coming; bringing them up." God, it's stopped!"
The bombardment ceased with a suddenness that was
Claude ran back to the Snout to see that the gun teams were ready.
"Wake up, boys! You know why we're here!"
Bert Fuller, who was up in the look-out, dropped back into the trench beside him. "They're coming, sir."
Claude gave the signal to the machine guns. Fire opened all along the
loop. In a moment a breeze sprang up, and the heavy smoke clouds
drifted to the rear. Mounting to the fire-step, he peered over. The enemy
was coming on eight deep, on the left of the Boar's Head, in long,
waving lines that reached out toward the main trench. Suddenly the
advance was checked. The files of running men dropped behind a
wrinkle in the earth fifty yards forward and did not instantly re-appear. It
struck Claude that they were waiting for
"Headquarters has a runner from the Missourians. They'll be up in twenty minutes. The Colonel will put them in here at once. Till then you must manage to hold."
"We'll hold. Fritz is behaving queerly. I don't understand his tactics . . . "
While he was speaking, everything was explained. The Boar's Snout spread apart with an explosion that split the earth, and went up in a volcano of smoke and flame. Claude and the Colonel's messenger were thrown on their faces. When they got to their feet, the Snout was a smoking crater full of dead and dying men. The Georgia gun teams were gone.
It was for this that the Hun advance had been waiting
Here they were, coming on the run. It was up to the rifles. The men who had been knocked down by the shock were all on their feet again. They looked at their officer questioningly, as if the whole situation had changed. Claude felt they were going soft under his eyes. In a moment the Hun bombers would be in on them, and they would break. He ran along the trench, pointing over the sand bags and shouting, "It's up to you, it's up to you!"
The rifles recovered themselves and began firing, but Claude felt they were spongy and uncertain, that their minds were already on the way to the rear. If they did anything, it must be quick, and their gun-work must be accurate. Nothing but a withering fire could check. . . . He sprang to the fire-step and then out on the parapet. Something instantaneous happened; he had his men in hand.
"Steady, steady!" He called the range to the rifle teams
The right of the Hun line swerved out, not more than
The Colonel's twenty minutes must be almost up, he thought. He couldn't take his eyes from the front line long enough to look at his wrist watch. . . . The men behind him saw Claude sway as if he had lost his balance and were trying to recover it. Then he plunged, face down, outside the parapet. Hicks caught his foot and pulled Lim back. At the same moment the Missourians ran yelling up the communication. They threw their machine guns up on the sand bags and went into action without an unnecessary motion.
Hicks and Bert Fuller and Oscar carried Claude forward toward the
Snout, out of the way of the supports that were pouring in. He was not
bleeding very much. He smiled at them as if he were going to speak, but
there was a weak
"Thank God I never told him," he said. "Thank God for that!"
Bert and Oscar knew what Hicks meant. Gerhardt had
been blown to pieces at his side when they dashed back through
the enemy barrage to find the Missourians. They were
THE sun is sinking low, a transport is steaming slowly
up the Narrows with the tide. The decks are covered with brown men.
They cluster over the
Sergeant Hicks was standing in the stem, smoking,
Bert Fuller elbowed his way up to the Sergeant. "The doctor says
Colonel Maxey is dying, He won't live to get off the boat, much less to
ride in the parade in New York
Hicks shrugged, as if Maxey's pneumonia were no affair of his. "Well, we should worry! We've left better officers than him over there."
"I'm not saying we haven't. But it seems too bad, when he's so strong for fuss and feathers. He's been sending cables about that parade for weeks."
"Huh!" Hicks elevated his eyebrows and glanced sidewise in disdain.
Presently he sputtered, squinting down at the glittering water, "Colonel
Maxey, anyhow! Colonel for what Claude and Gerhardt did,
Hicks and Bert Fuller have been helping to keep the noble fortress of Ehrenbreitstein. They have always hung together and are usually quarrelling and grumbling at each other when they are off duty. Still, they hang together. They are the last of, their group. Nifty Jones and Oscar, God only knows why, have gone on to the Black Sea.
During the year they were in the Rhine valley, Bert and Hicks were
separated only once, and that was when Hicks got a two weeks' leave
and, by dint of persevering and
Bert is the same sweet-tempered boy he was when he left his mother's
kitchen; his gravest troubles have been frequent betrothals. But Hicks'
round, chubby face has taken on a slightly cynical expression,—a look
quite out of place there. The chances of war have hurt his feelings . . . not
that he ever wanted anything for himself. The way in which
What Hicks had wanted most in this world was to run a garage and repair
shop with his old chum, Dell Able.
As the transport enters the North River, sirens and steam whistles all
along the water front begin to blow their shrill salute to the returning
soldiers. The men square their
By the banks of Lovely Creek, where it began, Claude Wheeler's story still goes on. To the two old women who work together in the farmhouse, the thought of him is always there, beyond everything else, at the farthest edge of consciousness, like the evening sun on the horizon.
Mrs. Wheeler got the word of his death one afternoon in the sitting- room, the room in which he had bade her good-bye. She was reading when the telephone rang.
"Is this the Wheeler farm? This is the telegraph office at Frankfort. We have a message from the War Department,—" the voice hesitated. "Isn't Mr. Wheeler there?"
"No, but you can read the message to me."
Mrs. Wheeler said, "Thank you," and hung up the receiver. She felt her way softly to her chair. She had an hour alone, when there was nothing but him in the room,— but him and the map there, which was the end of his road. Somewhere among those perplexing names, he had found his place.
Claude's letters kept coming for weeks afterward; then came the letters from his comrades and his Colonel to tell her all.
In the dark months that followed, when human nature looked to her uglier
than it had ever done before, those letters were
Mahailey, when they are alone, sometimes addresses Mrs. Wheeler as "Mudder"; "Now, Mudder, you go upstairs an' lay down an' rest yourself." Mrs. Wheeler knows that then she is thinking of Claude, is speaking for Claude. As they are working at the table or bending over the oven, something reminds them of him, and they think of him together, like one person: Mahailey will pat her back and say, "Never you mind, Mudder; you'll see your boy up yonder." Mrs. Wheeler always feels that God is near,—but Mahailey is not troubled by any knowledge of interstellar spaces, and for her He is nearer still,—directly overhead, not so very far above the kitchen stove.