One of Ours by Willa Cather (best romance ebooks .TXT) 📕

Germans are turning out submarines at the rate of three a day. They probably didn’t spring this on us until they had enough built to keep the ocean clear.”

“I don’t pretend to say what we could accomplish, son. But we must stand somewhere, morally. They have told us all along that we could be more helpful to the Allies out of the war than in it, because we could send munitions and supplies. If we agree to withdraw that aid, where are we? Helping Germany, all the time we are pretending to mind our own business! If our only alternative is to be at the bottom of the sea, we had better be there!”

“Mother, do sit down! We can’t settle it tonight. I never saw you so worked up.”

“Your father is worked up, too, or he would never have sent that telegram.” Mrs. Wheeler reluctantly took up her workbasket, and the boys talked with their old, easy friendliness.

When Ernest left, Claude walked as far as the Yoeders’ place with him, and came back across the snow-drifted fields, under the frosty brilliance of the winter stars. As he looked up at them, he felt more than ever that they must have something to do with the fate of nations, and with the incomprehensible things that were happening in the world. In the ordered universe there must be some mind that read the riddle of this one unhappy planet, that knew what was forming in the dark eclipse of this hour. A question hung in the air; over all this quiet land about him, over him, over his mother, even. He was afraid for his country, as he had been that night on the State House steps in Denver, when this war was undreamed of, hidden in the womb of time.

Claude and his mother had not long to wait. Three days later they knew that the German ambassador had been dismissed, and the American ambassador recalled from Berlin. To older men these events were subjects to think and converse about; but to boys like Claude they were life and death, predestination.

VII

One stormy morning Claude was driving the big wagon to town to get a load of lumber. The roads were beginning to thaw out, and the country was black and dirty looking. Here and there on the dark mud, grey snow crusts lingered, perforated like honeycomb, with wet weedstalks sticking up through them. As the wagon creaked over the high ground just above Frankfort, Claude noticed a brilliant new flag flying from the schoolhouse cupola. He had never seen the flag before when it meant anything but the Fourth of July, or a political rally. Today it was as if he saw it for the first time; no bands, no noise, no orators; a spot of restless colour against the sodden March sky.

He turned out of his way in order to pass the High School, drew up his team, and waited a few minutes until the noon bell rang. The older boys and girls came out first, with a flurry of raincoats and umbrellas. Presently he saw Gladys Farmer, in a yellow “slicker” and an oilskin hat, and waved to her. She came up to the wagon.

“I like your decoration,” he said, glancing toward the cupola.

“It’s a silk one the Senior boys bought with their athletic money. I advised them not to run it up in this rain, but the class president told me they bought that flag for storms.”

“Get in, and I’ll take you home.”

She took his extended hand, put her foot on the hub of the wheel, and climbed to the seat beside him. He clucked to his team.

“So your High School boys are feeling warlike these days?”

“Very. What do you think?”

“I think they’ll have a chance to express their feelings.”

“Do you, Claude? It seems awfully unreal.”

“Nothing else seems very real, either. I’m going to haul out a load of lumber, but I never expect to drive a nail in it. These things don’t matter now. There is only one thing we ought to do, and only one thing that matters; we all know it.”

“You feel it’s coming nearer every day?”

“Every day.”

Gladys made no reply. She only looked at him gravely with her calm, generous brown eyes. They stopped before the low house where the windows were full of flowers. She took his hand and swung herself to the ground, holding it for a moment while she said goodbye. Claude drove back to the lumber yard. In a place like Frankfort, a boy whose wife was in China could hardly go to see Gladys without causing gossip.

VIII

During the bleak month of March Mr. Wheeler went to town in his buckboard almost every day. For the first time in his life he had a secret anxiety. The one member of his family who had never given him the slightest trouble, his son Bayliss, was just now under a cloud.

Bayliss was a Pacifist, and kept telling people that if only the United States would stay out of this war, and gather up what Europe was wasting, she would soon be in actual possession of the capital of the world. There was a kind of logic in Bayliss’ utterances that shook Nat Wheeler’s imperturbable assumption that one point of view was as good as another. When Bayliss fought the dram and the cigarette, Wheeler only laughed. That a son of his should turn out a Prohibitionist, was a joke he could appreciate. But Bayliss’ attitude in the present crisis disturbed him. Day after day he sat about his son’s place of business, interrupting his arguments with funny stories. Bayliss did not go home at all that month. He said to his father, “No, Mother’s too violent. I’d better not.”

Claude and his mother read the papers in the evening, but they talked so little about what they read that Mahailey inquired anxiously whether they weren’t still fighting over yonder. When she could get Claude alone for a moment,