XV

Claude dreaded the inactivity of the winter, to which the farmer

usually looks forward with pleasure. He made the Thanksgiving

football game a pretext for going up to Lincoln,--went intending

to stay three days and stayed ten. The first night, when he

knocked at the glass door of the Erlichs' sitting-room and took

them by surprise, he thought he could never go back to the farm.

Approaching the house on that clear, frosty autumn evening,

crossing the lawn strewn with crackling dry leaves, he told

himself that he must not hope to find things the same. But they

were the same. The boys were lounging and smoking about the

square table with the lamp on it, and Mrs. Erlich was at the

piano, playing one of Mendelssohn's "Songs Without Words." When

he knocked, Otto opened the door and called:

"A surprise for you, Mother! Guess who's here."

What a welcome she gave him, and how much she had to tell him!

While they were all talking at once, Henry, the oldest son, came

downstairs dressed for a Colonial ball, with satin breeches and

stockings and a sword. His brothers began to point out the

inaccuracies of his costume, telling him that he couldn't

possibly call himself a French emigré unless he wore a powdered

wig. Henry took a book of memoirs from the shelf to prove to them

that at the time when the French emigrés were coming to

Philadelphia, powder was going out of fashion.

During this discussion, Mrs. Erlich drew Claude aside and told

him in excited whispers that her cousin Wilhelmina, the singer,

had at last been relieved of the invalid husband whom she had

supported for so many years, and now was going to marry her

accompanist, a man much younger than herself.

After the French emigré had gone off to his party, two young

instructors from the University dropped in, and Mrs. Erlich

introduced Claude as her "landed proprietor" who managed a big

ranch out in one of the western counties. The instructors took

their leave early, but Claude stayed on. What was it that made

life seem so much more interesting and attractive here than

elsewhere? There was nothing wonderful about this room; a lot of

books, a lamp... comfortable, hard-used furniture, some people

whose lives were in no way remarkable--and yet he had the sense

of being in a warm and gracious atmosphere, charged with generous

enthusiasms and ennobled by romantic friendships. He was glad to

see the same pictures on the wall; to find the Swiss wood-cutter

on the mantel, still bending under his load of faggots; to handle

again the heavy brass paper-knife that in its time had cut so

many interesting pages. He picked it up from the cover of a red

book lying there,-one of Trevelyan's volumes on Garibaldi, which

Julius told him he must read before he was another week older.

The next afternoon Claude took Mrs. Erlich to the football game

and came home with the family for dinner. He lingered on day

after day, but after the first few evenings his heart was growing

a little heavier all the time. The Erlich boys had so many new

interests he couldn't keep up with them; they had been going on,

and he had been standing still. He wasn't conceited enough to

mind that. The thing that hurt was the feeling of being out of

it, of being lost in another kind of life in which ideas played

but little part. He was a stranger who walked in and sat down

here; but he belonged out in the big, lonely country, where

people worked hard with their backs and got tired like the

horses, and were too sleepy at night to think of anything to say.

If Mrs. Erlich and her Hungarian woman made lentil soup and

potato dumplings and Wiener-Schnitzel for him, it only made the

plain fare on the farm seem the heavier.

When the second Friday came round, he went to bid his friends

good-bye and explained that he must be going home tomorrow. On

leaving the house that night, he looked back at the ruddy windows

and told himself that it was goodbye indeed, and not, as Mrs.

Erlich had fondly said, auf wiedersehen. Coming here only made

him more discontented with his lot; his frail claim on this kind

of life existed no longer. He must settle down into something

that was his own, take hold of it with both hands, no matter how

grim it was. The next day, during his journey out through the

bleak winter country, he felt that he was going deeper and deeper

into reality.

Claude had not written when he would be home, but on Saturday

there were always some of the neighbours in town. He rode out

with one of the Yoeder boys, and from their place walked on the

rest of the way. He told his mother he was glad to be back again.

He sometimes felt as if it were disloyal to her for him to be so

happy with Mrs. Erlich. His mother had been shut away from the

world on a farm for so many years; and even before that, Vermont

was no very stimulating place to grow up in, he guessed. She had

not had a chance, any more than he had, at those things which

make the mind more supple and keep the feeling young.

The next morning it was snowing outside, and they had a long,

pleasant Sunday breakfast. Mrs. Wheeler said they wouldn't try to

go to church, as Claude must be tired. He worked about the place

until noon, making the stock comfortable and looking after things

that Dan had neglected in his absence. After dinner he sat down

at the secretary and wrote a long letter to his friends in

Lincoln. Whenever he lifted his eyes for a moment, he saw the

pasture bluffs and the softly falling snow. There was something

beautiful about the submissive way in which the country met

winter. It made one contented,--sad, too. He sealed his letter

and lay down on the couch to read the paper, but was soon asleep.

When he awoke the afternoon was already far gone. The clock on

the shelf ticked loudly in the still room, the coal stove sent

out a warm glow. The blooming plants in the south bow-window

looked brighter and fresher than usual in the soft white light

that came up from the snow. Mrs. Wheeler was reading by the west

window, looking away from her book now and then to gaze off at

the grey sky and the muffled fields. The creek made a winding

violet chasm down through the pasture, and the trees followed it

in a black thicket, curiously tufted with snow. Claude lay for

some time without speaking, watching his mother's profile against

the glass, and thinking how good this soft, clinging snow-fall

would be for his wheat fields.

"What are you reading, Mother?" he asked presently.

She turned her head toward him. "Nothing very new. I was just

beginning 'Paradise Lost' again. I haven't read it for a long

while."

"Read aloud, won't you? Just wherever you happen to be. I like

the sound of it."

Mrs. Wheeler always read deliberately, giving each syllable its

full value. Her voice, naturally soft and rather wistful, trailed

over the long measures and the threatening Biblical names, all

familiar to her and full of meaning.

"A dungeon horrible, on all sides round

As one great furnace flamed; yet from the flames

No light, but rather darkness visible

Served only to discover sights of woe."

Her voice groped as if she were trying to realize something. The

room was growing greyer as she read on through the turgid

catalogue of the heathen gods, so packed with stories and

pictures, so unaccountably glorious. At last the light failed,

and Mrs. Wheeler closed the book.

"That's fine," Claude commented from the couch. "But Milton

couldn't have got along without the wicked, could he?"

Mrs. Wheeler looked up. "Is that a joke?" she asked slyly.

"Oh no, not at all! It just struck me that this part is so much

more interesting than the books about perfect innocence in Eden."

"And yet I suppose it shouldn't be so," Mrs. Wheeler said slowly,

as if in doubt.

Her son laughed and sat up, smoothing his rumpled hair. "The fact

remains that it is, dear Mother. And if you took all the great

sinners out of the Bible, you'd take out all the interesting

characters, wouldn't you?"

"Except Christ," she murmured.

"Yes, except Christ. But I suppose the Jews were honest when they

thought him the most dangerous kind of criminal."

"Are you trying to tangle me up?" his mother inquired, with both

reproach and amusement in her voice.

Claude went to the window where she was sitting, and looked out

at the snowy fields, now becoming blue and desolate as the

shadows deepened. "I only mean that even in the Bible the people

who were merely free from blame didn't amount to much."

"Ah, I see!" Mrs. Wheeler chuckled softly. "You are trying to get

me back to Faith and Works. There's where you always balked when

you were a little fellow. Well, Claude, I don't know as much

about it as I did then. As I get older, I leave a good deal more

to God. I believe He wants to save whatever is noble in this

world, and that He knows more ways of doing it than I." She rose

like a gentle shadow and rubbed her cheek against his flannel

shirt-sleeve, murmuring, "I believe He is sometimes where we

would least expect to find Him,--even in proud, rebellious

hearts."

For a moment they clung together in the pale, clear square of the

west window, as the two natures in one person sometimes meet and

cling in a fated hour.