One of Ours - Willa Cather [50]
Enid smiled and shook her head. She was amiable, but inflexible.
He folded his arms. "Go on."
He was chafed by her stubbornness, but he had to admire her resourcefulness in handling the car. At the bottom of one of the worst hills was a new cement culvert, overlaid with liquid mud, where there was nothing for the chains to grip. The car slid to the edge of the culvert and stopped on the very brink. While they were ploughing up the other side of the hill, Enid remarked; "It's a good thing your starter works well; a little jar would have thrown us over."
They pulled up at the Wheeler farm just before dark, and Mrs. Wheeler came running out to meet them with a rubber coat over her head.
"You poor drowned children!" she cried, taking Enid in her arms. "How did you ever get home? I so hoped you had stayed in Hastings."
"It was Enid who got us home," Claude told her. "She's a dreadfully foolhardy girl, and somebody ought to shake her, but she's a fine driver."
Enid laughed as she brushed a wet lock back from her forehead. "You were right, of course; the sensible thing would have been to turn in at the Rice place; only I didn't want to."
Later in the evening Claude was glad they hadn't. It was pleasant to be at home and to see Enid at the supper table, sitting on his father's right and wearing one of his mother's new grey house-dresses. They would have had a dismal time at the Rices', with no beds to sleep in except such as were already occupied by Rice children. Enid had never slept in his mother's guest room before, and it pleased him to think how comfortable she would be there.
At an early hour Mrs. Wheeler took a candle to light her guest to bed; Enid passed near Claude's chair as she was leaving the room. "Have you forgiven me?" she asked teasingly.
"What made you so pig-headed? Did you want to frighten me? or to show me how well you could drive?"
"Neither. I wanted to get home. Good-night."
Claude settled back in his chair and shaded his eyes. She did feel that this was home, then. She had not been afraid of his father's jokes, or disconcerted by Mahailey's knowing grin. Her ease in the household gave him unaccountable pleasure. He picked up a book, but did not read. It was lying open on his knee when his mother came back half an hour later.
"Move quietly when you go upstairs, Claude. She is so tired that she may be asleep already."
He took off his shoes and made his ascent with the utmost caution.
IV
Ernest Havel was cultivating his bright, glistening young cornfield one summer morning, whistling to himself an old German song which was somehow connected with a picture that rose in his memory. It was a picture of the earliest ploughing he could remember.
He saw a half-circle of green hills, with snow still lingering in the clefts of the higher ridges; behind the hills rose a wall of sharp mountains, covered with dark pine forests. In the meadows at the foot of that sweep of hills there was a winding creek, with polled willows in their first yellow-green, and brown fields. He himself was a little boy, playing by the creek and watching his father and mother plough with two great oxen, that had rope traces fastened to their heads and their long horns. His mother walked barefoot beside the oxen and led them; his father walked behind, guiding the plough. His father always looked down. His mother's face was almost as brown and furrowed as the fields, and her eyes were pale blue, like the skies of early spring. The two would go up and down thus all morning without speaking, except to the oxen. Ernest was the last of a long family, and as he played by the creek he used to wonder why his parents looked so old.
Leonard Dawson drove his car up to the fence and shouted, waking Ernest from his revery. He told his team to stand, and ran out to the edge of the field.
"Hello, Ernest," Leonard called. "Have you heard Claude Wheeler got hurt day before yesterday?"
"You don't say so!