food and drink. At dinner she sat on the right of the oldest son.
Claude, beside Mrs. Erlich at the other end of the table, watched
attentively the lady attired in green velvet and blazing
rhinestones.
After dinner, as Madame Schroeder-Schatz swept out of the dining
room, she dropped her cousin’s arm and stopped before Claude, who
stood at attention behind his chair.
“If Cousin Augusta can spare you, we must have a little talk
together. We have been very far separated,” she said.
She led Claude to one of the window seats in the living-room, at
once complained of a draft, and sent him to hunt for her green
scarf. He brought it and carefully put it about her shoulders;
but after a few moments, she threw it off with a slightly annoyed
air, as if she had never wanted it. Claude with solicitude
reminded her about the draft.
“Draft?” she said lifting her chin, “there is no draft here.”
She asked Claude where he lived, how much land his father owned,
what crops they raised, and about their poultry and dairy. When
she was a child she had lived on a farm in Bavaria, and she
seemed to know a good deal about farming and live-stock. She was
disapproving when Claude told her they rented half their land to
other farmers. “If I were a young man, I would begin to acquire
land, and I would not stop until I had a whole county,” she
declared. She said that when she met new people, she liked to
find out the way they made their living; her own way was a hard
one.
Later in the evening Madame Schroeder-Schatz graciously consented
to sing for her cousins. When she sat down to the piano, she
beckoned Claude and asked him to turn for her. He shook his head,
smiling ruefully.
“I’m sorry I’m so stupid, but I don’t know one note from
another.”
She tapped his sleeve. “Well, never mind. I may want the piano
moved yet; you could do that for me, eh?”
When Madame Schroeder-Schatz was in Mrs. Erlich’s bedroom,
powdering her nose before she put on her wraps, she remarked,
“What a pity, Augusta, that you have not a daughter now, to marry
to Claude Melnotte. He would make you a perfect son-in-law.”
“Ah, if I only had!” sighed Mrs. Erlich.
“Or,” continued Madame Schroeder-Schatz, energetically pulling on
her large carriage shoes, “if you were but a few years younger,
it might not yet be too late. Oh, don’t be a fool, Augusta! Such
things have happened, and will happen again. However, better a
widow than to be tied to a sick man—like a stone about my neck!
What a husband to go home to! and I a woman in full vigour. Jas
ist ein Kreuz ich trage!” She smote her bosom, on the left side.
Having put on first a velvet coat, then a fur mantle, Madame
Schroeder-Schatz moved like a galleon out into the living room and
kissed all her cousins, and Claude Wheeler, good-night.
XI
One warm afternoon in May Claude sat in his upstairs room at the
Chapins’, copying his thesis, which was to take the place of an
examination in history. It was a criticism of the testimony of
Jeanne d’Arc in her nine private examinations and the trial in
ordinary. The Professor had assigned him the subject with a flash
of humour. Although this evidence had been pawed over by so many
hands since the fifteenth century, by the phlegmatic and the
fiery, by rhapsodists and cynics, he felt sure that Wheeler would
not dismiss the case lightly.
Indeed, Claude put a great deal of time and thought upon the
matter, and for the time being it seemed quite the most important
thing in his life. He worked from an English translation of the
Proces, but he kept the French text at his elbow, and some of her
replies haunted him in the language in which they were spoken. It
seemed to him that they were like the speech of her saints, of
whom Jeanne said, “the voice is beautiful, sweet and low, and it
speaks in the French tongue.” Claude flattered himself that he
had kept all personal feeling out of the paper; that it was a
cold estimate of the girl’s motives and character as indicated by
the consistency and inconsistency of her replies; and of the
change wrought in her by imprisonment and by “the fear of the
fire.”
When he had copied the last page of his manuscript and sat
contemplating the pile of written sheets, he felt that after all
his conscientious study he really knew very little more about
the Maid of Orleans than when he first heard of her from his
mother, one day when he was a little boy. He had been shut up in
the house with a cold, he remembered, and he found a picture of
her in armour, in an old book, and took it down to the kitchen
where his mother was making apple pies. She glanced at the
picture, and while she went on rolling out the dough and fitting
it to the pans, she told him the story. He had forgotten what she
said,—it must have been very fragmentary,—but from that time on
he knew the essential facts about Joan of Arc, and she was a
living figure in his mind. She seemed to him then as clear as
now, and now as miraculous as then.
It was a curious thing, he reflected, that a character could
perpetuate itself thus; by a picture, a word, a phrase, it could
renew itself in every generation and be born over and over again
in the minds of children. At that time he had never seen a map of
France, and had a very poor opinion of any place farther away
than Chicago; yet he was perfectly prepared for the legend of
Joan of Arc, and often thought about her when he was bringing in
his cobs in the evening, or when he was sent to the windmill for
water and stood shaking in the cold while the chilled pump
brought it slowly up. He pictured her then very much as he did
now; about her figure there gathered a luminous cloud, like dust,
with soldiers in it… the banner with lilies… a great
church… cities with walls.
On this balmy spring afternoon, Claude felt softened and
reconciled to the world. Like Gibbon, he was sorry to have
finished his labour,—and he could not see anything else as
interesting ahead. He must soon be going home now. There would be
a few examinations to sit through at the Temple, a few more
evenings with the Erlichs, trips to the Library to carry back the
books he had been using,—and then he would suddenly find himself
with nothing to do but take the train for Frankfort.
He rose with a sigh and began to fasten his history papers
between covers. Glancing out of the window, he decided that he
would walk into town and carry his thesis, which was due today;
the weather was too fine to sit bumping in a street car. The
truth was, he wished to prolong his relations with his manuscript
as far as possible.
He struck off by the road,—it could scarcely be called a street,
since it ran across raw prairie land where the buffalo-peas were
in blossom. Claude walked slower than wa
s his custom, his straw
hat pushed back on his head and the blaze of the sun full in his
face. His body felt light in the scented wind, and he listened
drowsily to the larks, singing on dried weeds and sunflower
stalks. At this season their song is almost painful to hear, it
is so sweet. He sometimes thought of this walk long afterward; it
was memorable to him, though he could not say why.
On reaching the University, he went directly to the Department of
European History, where he was to leave his thesis on a long
table, with a pile of others. He rather dreaded this, and was
glad when, just as he entered, the Professor came out from his
private office and took the bound manuscript into his own hands,
nodding cordially.
“Your thesis? Oh yes, Jeanne d’Arc. The Proces. I had forgotten.
Interesting material, isn’t it?” He opened the cover and ran over
the pages. “I suppose you acquitted her on the evidence?”
Claude blushed. “Yes, sir.”
“Well, now you might read what Michelet has to say about her.
There’s an old translation in the Library. Did you enjoy working
on it?”
“I did, very much.” Claude wished to heaven he could think of
something to say.
“You’ve got a good deal out of your course, altogether, haven’t
you? I’ll be interested to see what you do next year. Your work
has been very satisfactory to me.” The Professor went back into
his study, and Claude was pleased to see that he carried the
manuscript with him and did not leave it on the table with the
others.
XII
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 Ma
ine; 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
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