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 returned Mr. Wheeler announced that
he had a secret. After several days of reticence, during which he
shut himself up in the sitting-room writing letters, and passed
mysterious words and winks with Ralph at table, he disclosed a
project which swept away all Claude's plans and purposes.
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 assuming
certain mortgages, he got Wested's fine, well-watered ranch in
exchange. He paid him a good price for his cattle, and promised
to take the sick man back to Maine and see him comfortably
settled there. 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
acetylene lamp, his neckband 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 management. Mr. Wheeler assured
his wife that he wasn't taking advantage of poor Wested; the
timber on the Maine place was really worth a good deal of money;
but because his father had always been so proud of his great pine
woods, he had never, he said, just felt like turning a sawmill
loose in them. Now he was trading a pleasant old farm that didn't
bring in anything for a grama-grass ranch which ought to turn
over a profit of ten or twelve thousand dollars in good cattle
years, and wouldn't lose much in bad ones. He expected to spend
about half his time out there with Ralph. "When I'm away," he
remarked genially, "you and Mahailey won't have so much to do.
You can devote yourselves to embroidery, so to speak."
"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 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 mean 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, feeling her
way down the dark staircase to the kitchen. It was dusky and
quiet there. Mahailey sat in a corner, hemming dish-towels by the
light of a smoky old brass lamp which was her own cherished
luminary. Mrs. Wheeler walked up and down the long room in soft,
silent agitation, both hands pressed tightly to her breast, where
there was a physical ache of sympathy for Claude.
She remembered kind Tom Wested. He had stayed over night with
them several times, and had come to them for consolation after
his wife died. It seemed to her that his decline in health and
loss of courage, Mr. Wheeler's fortuitous trip to Denver, the old
pine-wood farm in Maine; were all things that fitted together and
made a net to envelop her unfortunate son. She knew that he had
been waiting impatiently for the autumn, and that for the first
time he looked forward eagerly to going back to school. He was
homesick for his friends, the Erlichs, and his mind was all the
time upon the history course he meant to take.
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 disappointment
would be bitter. "Why, it will almost break his heart," she
murmured aloud. Mahailey was a little deaf and heard nothing. She
sat holding her work up to the light, driving her needle with a
big brass thimble, nodding with sleepiness between stitches.
Though Mrs. Wheeler was scarcely conscious of it, the old woman's
presence was a comfort to her, as she walked up and down with her
drifting, uncertain step.
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 Mahailey who grumbled. If he felt like
eating roast beef and went out and killed a steer, she did the
best she could to take care of the meat, and if some of it
spoiled she tried not to worry. When she was not lost in
religious meditation, she was likely to be thinking about some
one of the old books she read over and over. Her personal life
was so far removed from the scene of her daily activities that
rash and violent men could not break in upon it. But where Claude
was concerned, she lived on another plane, dropped into the lower
air, tainted with human breath and pulsating with poor, blind,
passionate human feelings.
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 happy, 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, perturbed spirit," she sometimes whispered to him in
her mind, when she wakened thus and thought of him. There was a
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.