another. To him they were very cordial; the one who was lying
down came forward to shake hands, keeping the place in his book
with his finger.
On a table in the middle of the room were pipes and boxes of
tobacco, cigars in a glass jar, and a big Chinese bowl full of
cigarettes. This provisionment seemed the more remarkable to
Claude because at home he had to smoke in the cowshed. The number
of books astonished him almost as much; the wainscoting all
around the room was built up in open bookcases, stuffed with
volumes fat and thin, and they all looked interesting and
hard-used. One of the brothers had been to a party the night
before, and on coming home had put his dress-tie about the neck
of a little plaster bust of Byron that stood on the mantel. This
head, with the tie at a rakish angle, drew Claude’s attention
more than anything else in the room, and for some reason
instantly made him wish he lived there.
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
daguerreotypes. Her face, too, suggested a daguerreotype; there
was something old-fashioned and picturesque about it. Her skin
had the soft whiteness of white flowers that have been drenched
by rain. She talked with quick gestures, and her decided little
nod was quaint and very personal. Her hazel-coloured eyes peered
expectantly over her nose-glasses, always watching to see things
turn out wonderfully well; always looking for some good German
fairy in the cupboard or the cake-box, or in the steaming vapor
of wash-day.
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 naive. 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 to 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 below Claude’s chin,
and she peered up at him with that quaintly hopeful expression,
as if—as if even he might turn out wonderfully well! Certainly,
nobody had ever looked at him like that before.
“It’s been lovely,” he murmured to her, quite without
embarrassment, and in happy unconsciousness he turned the knob
and passed out through the glass door.
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 remember
exactly how Mrs. Erlich and the boys had looked to him on that
first night, could repeat almost word for word the conversation
which had been so novel to him. Then he had supposed the Erlichs
were rich people, but he found out afterwards that they were
poor. The father was dead, and all the boys had to work, even
those who were still in school. They merely knew how to live, he
discovered, and spent their money on themselves, instead of on
machines to do the work and machines to entertain people.
Machines, Claude decided, could not make pleasure, whatever else
they could do. They could not make agreeable people, either. In
so far as he could see, the latter were made by judicious
indulgence in almost everything he had been taught to shun.
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 famil
y; but they were better
looking than he, and better company. To be sure, long Baumgartner
was an intimate of the house, and he was a gawky boy with big red
hands and patched shoes; but he could at least speak German to
the mother, and he played the piano, and seemed to know a great
deal about music.
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 questioned him.
He had grown up with the conviction that it was beneath his
dignity to explain himself, just as it was to dress carefully, or
to be caught taking pains about anything. Ernest was the only
person he knew who tried to state clearly just why he believed
this or that; and people at home thought him very conceited and
foreign. It wasn’t American to explain yourself; you didn’t have
to! On the farm you said you would or you wouldn’t; that
Roosevelt was all right, or that he was crazy. You weren’t
supposed to say more unless you were a stump speaker,—if you
tried to say more, it was because you liked to hear yourself
talk. Since you never said anything, you didn’t form the habit of
thinking. If you got too much bored, you went to town and bought
something new.
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 manner? He caught himself
using words that had never crossed his lips before, that in his
mind were associated only with the printed page. When he suddenly
realized that he was using a word for the first time, and
probably mispronouncing it, he would become as much confused as
if he were trying to pass a lead dollar, would blush and stammer
and let some one finish his sentence for him.
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; “Spinn, spinn, du Tochter
mein.” He didn’t know why, but he simply adored it! Every time he
went away from her he felt happy and full of kindness, and
thought about beech woods and walled towns, or about Carl Schurz
and the Romantic revolution.
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.
VII
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 returning
to his own place. Even when it broke his spirit and humbled his
pride, he felt it was right that he should be thus humbled. He
didn’t question that the lowest state of mind was the truest, and
that the less a man thought of himself, the more likely he was to
be correct in his estimate.
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 stiff 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 my
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
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 behindhand. It’s
been fine, open weather for husking, too. But at least we’ve got
rid of that miserable Jerry; so there’s something to be thankful
for. He had one of his fits of temper in town one day, when he
was hitching up to come home, and Leonard Dawson saw him beat one
of our horses with the neck-yoke. Leonard told your father, and
spoke his mind, and your father discharged Jerry. If you or Ralph
had told him, he most likely wouldn’t have done anything about
it. But I guess all fathers are the same.” She chuckled
confidingly, leaning on Claude’s arm as they descended the
stairs.
“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 round all right.”
“Pompey isn’t mean; he’s nervous. All the horses hated Jerry, and
they had good reason to.” Claude jerked his shoulders to shake
off disgusting recollections of this mongrel man w
hich flashed
back into his mind. He had seen things happen in the barn that
he positively couldn’t tell his father. 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 informed of
Jerry’s fate. Ralph told him the neighbourhood gossip: Gus
Yoeder, their German neighbour, was bringing suit against a
farmer who had shot his dog. Leonard Dawson was going to marry
Susie Grey. She was the girl on whose account Leonard had slapped
Bayliss, Claude remembered.
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 listened, but he
could see that she was much more interested in hearing about the
Chapins, and whether Edward’s throat had improved, and where he
had preached this fall. That was one of the disappointing things
about coming home; he could never interest his mother in new
things or people unless they in some way had to do with the
church. He knew, too, she was always hoping to hear that he at
last felt the need of coming closer to the church. She did not
harass him about these things, but she had told him once or twice
that nothing could happen in the world which would give her so
much pleasure as to see him reconciled to Christ. He realized, as
he talked to her about the Erlichs, that she was wondering