One of Ours

by Willa Sibert Cather

  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

  except his mother. Hearing Mrs. Wheeler’s wandering, uncertain

  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