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 expecting him, so he thought he would walk home
and stop at the mill to see Enid Royce. After all, old friends
were best.
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 made him think of
Mahailey, who had probably been out this very morning, gouging
the sod with her broken butcher knife and stuffing dandelion
greens into her apron. She always went for greens with an air of
secrecy, very early, and sneaked along the roadsides stooping
close to the ground, as if she might be detected and driven away,
or as if the dandelions were wild things and had to be caught
sleeping.
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 he liked going in where the water-wheel hung dripping
in its dark cave, and quivering streaks of sunlight came in
through the cracks to play on the green slime and the spotted
jewel-weed growing in the shale. The mill was a place of sharp
contrasts; bright sun and deep shade, roaring sound and heavy,
dripping silence. He remembered how astonished he was one day,
when he found Mr. Royce in gloves and goggles, cleaning the
millstones, and discovered what harmless looking things they
were. The miller picked away at them with a sharp hammer until
the sparks flew, and Claude still had on his hand a blue spot
where a chip of flint went under the skin when he got too near.
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 him in dusty
miller's clothes, giving his man a day off. He had long ago
ceased to depend on the risings and fallings of Lovely Creek for
his power, and had put in a gasoline engine. The old dam now lay
"like a holler tooth," as one of his men said, grown up with
weeds and willow-brush.
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 millers long. They
complained of the gloom of the house, and said they could not get
enough to eat. Mrs. Royce went every summer to a vegetarian
sanatorium in Michigan, where she learned to live on nuts and
toasted cereals. She gave her family nourishment, to be sure, but
there was never during the day a meal that a man could look
forward to with pleasure, or sit down to with satisfaction. Mr.
Royce usually dined at the hotel in town. Nevertheless, his wife
was distinguished for certain brilliant culinary accomplishments.
Her bread was faultless. When a church supper was toward, she was
always called upon for her wonderful mayonnaise dressing, or her
angel-food cake,--sure to be the lightest and spongiest in any
assemblage of cakes.
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.
Her distrust had communicated itself to her daughters and in
countless little ways had coloured their feelings about life.
They grew up under the shadow of being "different," and formed no
close friendships. Gladys Farmer was the only Frankfort girl who
had ever gone much to the mill house. Nobody was surprised when
Caroline Royce, the older daughter, went out to China to be a
missionary, or that her mother let her go without a protest. The
Royce women were strange, anyhow, people said; with Carrie gone,
they hoped Enid would grow up to be more like other folk. She
dressed well, came to town often in her car, and was always ready
to work for the church or the public library.
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 ear 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 tableaux vivants,
Enid was chosen for Nydia, the blind girl of Pompeii, and for the
martyr in "Christ or Diana." The pallor of her skin, the
submissive inclination of her forehead, and her dark, unchanging
eyes, made one think of something "early Christian."
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 up the day before, and
making furrows in which to drop seeds. From the turn of the road,
by the knotty old willows, Claude saw her pink starched dress and
little white sun-bonnet. He hurried forward.
"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 bonnet.
"Perhaps I take more interest in flowers than I do in people. I
often envy you, Claude; you have so many interests."
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 been
moping all winter. We all feel friendly enough, but we go
plodding on and never get together. You and I are old friends,
and yet we hardly ever see each other. Mother says you've been
promising for two years to run up and have a visit with her. Why
don't you come? It would please her."
"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?"