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 goin' 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
month--not, indeed, until the announcement that Germany would
resume unrestricted submarine warfare made every one look
questioningly at his neighbour.
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 seagoing 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 administration!"
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 whole German army
will be on the Western front now. What could this country do? How
long do you suppose it takes to make an army?"
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 clear."
"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 friendliness.
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 something to do with
the fate of nations, and with the incomprehensible things that
were happening in the world. In the ordered universe there must
be some mind that read the riddle of this one unhappy planet,
that knew what was forming in the dark eclipse of this hour. A
question hung in the air; over all this quiet land about him,
over him, over his mother, even. He was afraid for his country,
as he had been that night on the State House steps in Denver,
when this war was undreamed of, hidden in the womb of time.
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.