One of Ours

by Willa Sibert Cather

  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