by Willa Cather
“Are you packed?” Ralph asked in astonishment.
“Nearly. I wish you’d go over things and make them look a little neater, if you can. I’d hate to have a girl see the inside of that suitcase, the way it is. Where shall I put my cigars? They’ll make everything smell, wherever I put them. All my clothes seem to smell of cooking, or starch, or something. I don’t know what Mahailey does to them,” he ended bitterly.
Ralph looked outraged. “Well, of all ingratitude! Mahailey’s been ironing your damned old shirts for a week!”
“Yes, yes, I know. Don’t rattle me. I forgot to put any handkerchiefs in my trunk, so you’ll have to get the whole bunch in somewhere.”
Mr. Wheeler appeared in the doorway, his Sunday black trousers gallowsed up high over a white shirt, wafting a rich odor of bayrum from his tumbled hair. He held a thin folded paper delicately between his thick fingers.
“Where is your bill-book, son?”
Claude caught up his discarded trousers and extracted a square of leather from the pocket. His father took it and placed the bit of paper inside with the bank notes. “You may want to pick up some trifle your wife fancies,” he said. “Have you got your railroad tickets in here? Here is your trunk check Dan brought back. Don’t forget, I’ve put it in with your tickets and marked it C. W., so you’ll know which is your check and which is Enid’s.”
“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”
Claude had already drawn from the bank all the money he would need. This additional bank check was Mr. Wheeler’s admission that he was sorry for some sarcastic remarks he had made a few days ago, when he discovered that Claude had reserved a stateroom on the Denver express. Claude had answered curtly that when Enid and her mother went to Michigan they always had a stateroom, and he wasn’t going to ask her to travel less comfortably with him.
At seven o’clock the Wheeler family set out in the two cars that stood waiting by the windmill. Mr. Wheeler drove the big Cadillac, and Ralph took Mahailey and Dan in the Ford. When they reached the mill house the outer yard was already black with motors, and the porch and parlours were full of people talking and moving about.
Claude went directly upstairs. Ralph began to seat the guests, arranging the folding chairs in such a way as to leave a passage from the foot of the stairs to the floral arch he had constructed that morning. The preacher had his Bible in his hand and was standing under the light, hunting for his chapter. Enid would have preferred to have Mr. Weldon come down from Lincoln to marry her, but that would have wounded Mr. Snowberry deeply. After all, he was her minister, though he was not eloquent and persuasive like Arthur Weldon. He had fewer English words at his command than most human beings, and even those did not come to him readily. In his pulpit he sought for them and struggled with them until drops of perspiration rolled from his forehead and fell upon his coarse, matted brown beard. But he believed what he said, and language was so little an accomplishment with him that he was not tempted to say more than he believed. He had been a drummer boy in the Civil War, on the losing side, and he was a simple, courageous man.
Ralph was to be both usher and best man. Gladys Farmer could not be one of the bridesmaids because she was to play the wedding march. At eight o’clock Enid and Claude came downstairs together, conducted by Ralph and followed by four girls dressed in white, like the bride. They took their places under the arch before the preacher. He began with the chapter from Genesis about the creation of man, and Adam’s rib, reading in a laboured manner, as if he did not quite know why he had selected that passage and was looking for something he did not find. His nose-glasses kept falling off and dropping upon the open book. Throughout this prolonged fumbling Enid stood calm, looking at him respectfully, very pretty in her short veil. Claude was so pale that he looked unnatural,—nobody had ever seen him like that before. His face, between his very black clothes and his smooth, sandy hair, was white and severe, and he uttered his responses in a hollow voice. Mahailey, at the back of the room, in a black hat with green gooseberries on it, was standing, in order to miss nothing. She watched Mr. Snowberry as if she hoped to catch some visible sign of the miracle he was performing. She always wondered just what it was the preacher did to make the wrongest thing in the world the rightest thing in the world.
When it was over, Enid went upstairs to put on her travelling dress, and Ralph and Gladys began seating the guests for supper. Just twenty minutes later Enid came down and took her place beside Claude at the head of the long table. The company rose and drank the bride’s health in grape-juice punch. Mr. Royce, however, while the guests were being seated, had taken Mr. Wheeler down to the fruit cellar, where the two old friends drank off a glass of well-seasoned Kentucky whiskey, and shook hands. When they came back to the table, looking younger than when they withdrew, the preacher smelled the tang of spirits and felt slighted. He looked disconsolately into his ruddy goblet and thought about the marriage at Cana. He tried to apply his Bible literally to life and, though he didn’t dare breathe it aloud in these days, he could never see why he was better than his Lord.
Ralph, as master of ceremonies, kept his head and forgot nothing. When it was time to start, he tapped Claude on the shoulder, cutting his father short in one of his best stories. Contrary to custom, the bridal couple were to go to the station unaccompanied, and they vanished from the head of the table with only a nod and a smile to the guests. Ralph hurried them into the light car, where he had already stowed Enid’s hand luggage. Only wizened little Mrs. Royce slipped out from the kitchen to bid them good-bye.
That evening some bad boys had come out from town and strewn the road near the mill with dozens of broken glass bottles, after which they hid in the wild plum bushes to wait for the fun. Ralph’s was the first car out, and though his lights glittered on this bed of jagged glass, there was no time to stop; the road was ditched on either side, so he had to drive straight ahead, and got into Frankfort on flat tires. The express whistled just as he pulled up at the station. He and Claude caught up the four pieces of hand luggage and put them in the stateroom. Leaving Enid there with the bags, the two boys went to the rear platform of the observation car to talk until the last moment. Ralph checked off on his fingers the list of things he had promised Claude to attend to. Claude thanked him feelingly. He felt that without Ralph he could never have got married at all. They had never been such good friends as during the last fortnight.
The wheels began to turn. Ralph gripped Claude’s hand, ran to the front of the car and stepped off. As Claude passed him, he stood waving his handkerchief,—a rather funny figure under the station lights, in his black clothes and his stiff straw hat, his short legs well apart, wearing his incurably jaunty air.
The train glided quietly out through the summer darkness, along the timbered river valley. Claude was alone on the back platform, smoking a nervous cigar. As they passed the deep cut where Lovely Creek flowed into the river, he saw the lights of the mill house flash for a moment in the distance. The night air was still; heavy with the smell of sweet clover that grew high along the tracks, and of wild grapevines wet with dew. The conductor came to ask for the tickets, saying with a wise smile that he had been hunting for him, as he didn’t like to trouble the lady.
After he was gone, Claude looked at his watch, threw away the end of his cigar, and went back through the Pullman cars. The passengers had gone to bed; the overhead lights were always turned low when the train left Frankfort. He made his way through the aisles of swaying green curtains, and tapped at the door of his state room. It opened a little way, and Enid stood there in a white silk dressing-gown with many ruffles, her hair in two smooth braids over her shoulders.
“Claude,” she said in a low voice, “would you mind getting a berth somewhere out in the car tonight? The porter says they are not all taken. I’m not feeling very well. I think the dressing on the chicken salad must have been too rich.”
He answered mechanically. “Yes, certainly. Can’t I get you something?”
“No, thank you. Sleep will do me more good than anything else.Good-night.”
She closed the door, and he heard the lock slip. He stood looking at the highly polished wood of the panel for a moment, then turned irresolutely and went back along the slightly swaying aisle of green curtains. In the observation car he stretched himself out upon two wicker chairs and lit another cigar. At twelve o’clock the porter came in.
“This car is closed for the night, sah. Is you the gen’leman from the stateroom in fourteen? Do you want a lower?”
“No, thank you. Is there a smoking car?”
“They is the day-coach smokah, but it ain’t likely very clean at this time o’ night.”
“That’s all right. It’s forward?” Claude absently handed him a coin, and the porter conducted him to a very dirty car where the floor was littered with newspapers and cigar stumps, and the leather cushions were grey with dust. A few desperate looking men lay about with their shoes off and their suspenders hanging down their backs. The sight of them reminded Claude that his left foot was very sore, and that his shoes must have been hurting him for some time. He pulled them off, and thrust his feet, in their silk socks, on the opposite seat.
On that long, dirty, uncomfortable ride Claude felt many things, but the paramount feeling was homesickness. His hurt was of a kind that made him turn with a sort of aching cowardice to the old, familiar things that were as sure as the sunrise. If only the sagebrush plain, over which the stars were shining, could suddenly break up and resolve itself into the windings of Lovely Creek, with his father’s house on the hill, dark and silent in the summer night! When he closed his eyes he could see the light in his mother’s window; and, lower down, the glow of Mahailey’s lamp, where she sat nodding and mending his old shirts. Human love was a wonderful thing, he told himself, and it was most wonderful where it had least to gain.
By morning the storm of anger, disappointment, and humiliation that was boiling in him when he first sat down in the observation car, had died out. One thing lingered; the peculiarly casual, indifferent, uninterested tone of his wife’s voice when she sent him away. It was the flat tone in which people make commonplace remarks about common things.
Day broke with silvery brightness on the summer sage. The sky grew pink, the sand grew gold. The dawn-wind brought through the windows the acrid smell of the sagebrush: an odour that is peculiarly stimulating in the early morning, when it always seems to promise freedom . . . large spaces, new beginnings, better days.
The train was due in Denver at eight o’clock. Exactly at seven thirty Claude knocked at Enid’s door,—this time firmly. She was dressed, and greeted him with a fresh, smiling face, holding her hat in her hand.
“Are you feeling better?” he asked.
“Oh, yes! I am perfectly all right this morning. I’ve put out all your things for you, there on the seat.”
He glanced at them. “Thank you. But I won’t have time to change,I’m afraid.”
“Oh, won’t you? I’m so sorry I forgot to give you your bag last night. But you must put on another necktie, at least. You look too much like a groom.”
“Do I?” he asked, with a scarcely perceptible curl of his lip.
Everything he needed was neatly arranged on the plush seat; shirt, collar, tie, brushes, even a handkerchief. Those in his pockets were black from dusting off the cinders that blew in all night, and he threw them down and took up the clean one. There was a damp spot on it, and as he unfolded it he recognized the scent of a cologne Enid often used. For some reason this attention unmanned him. He felt the smart of tears in his eyes, and to hide them bent over the metal basin and began to scrub his face. Enid stood behind him, adjusting her hat in the mirror.
“How terribly smoky you are, Claude. I hope you don’t smoke before breakfast?”
“No. I was in the smoking car awhile. I suppose my clothes got full of it.”
“You are covered with dust and cinders, too!” She took the clothes broom from the rack and began to brush him.
Claude caught her hand. “Don’t, please!” he said sharply. “The porter can do that for me.”
Enid watched him furtively as he closed and strapped his suitcase. She had often heard that men were cross before breakfast.
“Sure you’ve forgotten nothing?” he asked before he closed her bag.
“Yes. I never lose things on the train,—do you?”
“Sometimes,” he replied guardedly, not looking up as he snapped the catch.
Book Three
Sunrise on the Prairie
I
Claude was to continue farming with his father, and after he returned from his wedding journey, he fell at once to work. The harvest was almost as abundant as that of the summer before, and he was busy in the fields six days a week.
One afternoon in August he came home with his team, watered and fed the horses in a leisurely way, and then entered his house by the back door. Enid, he knew, would not be there. She had gone to Frankfort to a meeting of the Anti-Saloon League. The Prohibition party was bestirring itself in Nebraska that summer, confident of voting the State dry the following year, which purpose it triumphantly accomplished.
Enid’s kitchen, full of the afternoon sun, glittered with new paint, spotless linoleum, and blue-and-white cooking vessels. In the dining-room the cloth was laid, and the table was neatly set for one. Claude opened the icebox, where his supper was arranged for him; a dish of canned salmon with a white sauce; hardboiled eggs, peeled and lying in a nest of lettuce leaves; a bowl of ripe tomatoes, a bit of cold rice pudding; cream and butter. He placed these things on the table, cut some bread, and after carelessly washing his face and hands, sat down to eat in his working shirt. He propped the newspaper against a red glass water pitcher and read the war news while he had his supper. He was annoyed when he heard heavy footsteps coming around the house. Leonard Dawson stuck his head in at the kitchen door, and Claude rose quickly and reached for his hat; but Leonard came in, uninvited, and sat down. His brown shirt was wet where his suspenders gripped his shoulders, and his face, under a wide straw hat which he did not remove, was unshaven and streaked with dust.
“Go ahead and finish your supper,” he cried. “Having a wife with a car of her own is next thing to having no wife at all. How they do like to roll around! I’ve been mighty blamed careful to see that Susie never learned to drive a car. See here, Claude, how soon do you figure you’ll be able to let me have the thrasher? My wheat will begin to sprout in the shock pretty soon. Do you reckon your father would be willing to work on Sunday, if I helped you, to let the machine off a day earlier?”
“I’m afraid not. Mother wouldn’t like it. We never have done that, even when we were crowded.”
“Well, I think I’ll go over and have a talk with your mother. If she could look inside my wheat shocks, maybe I could convince her it’s pretty near a case of your neighbour’s ox falling into a pit on the Sabbath day.”
“That’s a good idea. She’s always reasonable.”
Leonard rose. “What’s the news?”
“The Germans have torpedoed an English passenger ship, the Arabic; coming this way, too.”
“That’s all right,” Leonard declared. “Maybe Americans will stay at home now, and mind their own business. I don’t care how they chew each other up over there, not a bit! I’d as soon one got wiped off the map as another.”
“Your grandparents were English people, weren’t they?”
“That’s a long while ago. Yes, my grandmother wore a cap and little white curls, and I tell Susie I wouldn’t mind if the baby turned out to have my grandmother’s skin. She had the finest complexion I ever saw.”
As they stepped out of the back door, a troop of white chickens with red combs ran squawking toward them. It was the hour at which the poultry was usually fed. Leonard stopped to admire them. “You’ve got a fine lot of hens. I always did like white leghorns. Where are all your roosters?”
“We’ve only got one. He’s shut up
in the coop. The brood hens are setting. Enid is going to try raising winter frys.”
“Only one rooster? And may I ask what these hens do?”
Claude laughed. “They lay eggs, just the same,—better. It’s the fertile eggs that spoil in warm weather.”
This information seemed to make Leonard angry. “I never heard of such damned nonsense,” he blustered. “I raise chickens on a natural basis, or I don’t raise ‘em at all.” He jumped into his car for fear he would say more.
When he got home his wife was lifting supper, and the baby sat near her in its buggy, playing with a rattle. Dirty and sweaty as he was, Leonard picked up the clean baby and began to kiss it and smell it, rubbing his stubbly chin in the soft creases of its neck. The little girl was beside herself with delight.
“Go and wash up for supper, Len,” Susie called from the stove. He put down the baby and began splashing in the tin basin, talking with his eyes shut.
“Susie, I’m in an awful temper. I can’t stand that damned wife of Claude’s!”
She was spearing roasting ears out of a big iron pot and looked up through the steam. “Why, have you seen her? I was listening on the telephone this morning and heard her tell Bayliss she would be in town until late.” “Oh, yes! She went to town all right, and he’s over there eating a cold supper by himself. That woman’s a fanatic. She ain’t content with practising prohibition on humankind; she’s begun now on the hens.” While he placed the chairs and wheeled the baby up to the table, he explained Enid’s method of raising poultry to his wife. She said she really didn’t see any harm in it.
“Now be honest, Susie; did you ever know hens would keep on laying without a rooster?”
