One of Ours - Willa Cather [73]
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 AntiSaloon 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