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

Leonard looked him over. “Good Lord, Claude, you ain’t the only fellow around here that wears pants! What for? Well, I’ll tell you what for,” he held up three large red fingers threateningly; “Belgium, the Lusitania, Edith Cavell. That dirt’s got under my skin. I’ll get my corn planted, and then Father’ll look after Susie till I come back.”

Claude took a long breath. “Well, Leonard, you fooled me. I believed all this chaff you’ve been giving me about not caring who chewed up who.”

“And no more do I care,” Leonard protested, “not a damn! But there’s a limit. I’ve been ready to go since the Lusitania. I don’t get any satisfaction out of my place any more. Susie feels the same way.”

Claude looked at his big neighbour. “Well, I’m off tomorrow, Leonard. Don’t mention it to my folks, but if I can’t get into the army, I’m going to enlist in the navy. They’ll always take an able-bodied man. I’m not coming back here.” He held out his hand and Leonard took it with a smack.

“Good luck, Claude. Maybe we’ll meet in foreign parts. Wouldn’t that be a joke! Give my love to Enid when you write. I always did think she was a fine girl, though I disagreed with her on Prohibition.” Claude crossed the fields mechanically, without looking where he went. His power of vision was turned inward upon scenes and events wholly imaginary as yet.

One bright June day Mr. Wheeler parked his car in a line of motors before the new pressed-brick courthouse in Frankfort. The Court house stood in an open square, surrounded by a grove of cottonwoods. The lawn was freshly cut, and the flower beds were blooming. When Mr. Wheeler entered the courtroom upstairs, it was already half-full of farmers and townspeople, talking in low tones while the summer flies buzzed in and out of the open windows. The judge, a one-armed man, with white hair and side-whiskers, sat at his desk, writing with his left hand. He was an old settler in Frankfort county, but from his frockcoat and courtly manners you might have thought he had come from Kentucky yesterday instead of thirty years ago. He was to hear this morning a charge of disloyalty brought against two German farmers. One of the accused was August Yoeder, the Wheelers’ nearest neighbour, and the other was Troilus Oberlies, a rich German from the northern part of the county.

Oberlies owned a beautiful farm and lived in a big white house set on a hill, with a fine orchard, rows of beehives, barns, granaries, and poultry yards. He raised turkeys and tumbler-pigeons, and many geese and ducks swam about on his cattleponds. He used to boast that he had six sons, “like our German Emperor.” His neighbours were proud of his place, and pointed it out to strangers. They told how Oberlies had come to Frankfort county a poor man, and had made his fortune by his industry and intelligence. He had twice crossed the ocean to revisit his fatherland, and when he returned to his home on the prairies he brought presents for everyone; his lawyer, his banker, and the merchants with whom he dealt in Frankfort and Vicount. Each of his neighbours had in his parlour some piece of woodcarving or weaving, or some ingenious mechanical toy that Oberlies had picked up in Germany. He was an older man than Yoeder, wore a short beard that was white and curly, like his hair, and though he was low in stature, his puffy red face and full blue eyes, and a certain swagger about his carriage, gave him a look of importance. He was boastful and quick-tempered, but until the war broke out in Europe nobody had ever had any trouble with him. Since then he had constantly found fault and complained⁠—everything was better in the Old Country.

Mr. Wheeler had come to town prepared to lend Yoeder a hand if he needed one. They had worked adjoining fields for thirty years now. He was surprised that his neighbour had got into trouble. He was not a blusterer, like Oberlies, but a big, quiet man, with a serious, large-featured face, and a stern mouth that seldom opened. His countenance might have been cut out of red sandstone, it was so heavy and fixed. He and Oberlies sat on two wooden chairs outside the railing of the judge’s desk.

Presently the judge stopped writing and said he would hear the charges against Troilus Oberlies. Several neighbours took the stand in succession; their complaints were confused and almost humorous. Oberlies had said the United States would be licked, and that would be a good thing; America was a great country, but it was run by fools, and to be governed by Germany was the best thing that could happen to it. The witness went on to say that since Oberlies had made his money in this country⁠—

Here the judge interrupted him. “Please confine yourself to statements which you consider disloyal, made in your presence by the defendant.” While the witness proceeded, the judge took off his glasses and laid them on the desk and began to polish the lenses with a silk handkerchief, trying them, and rubbing them again, as if he desired to see clearly.

A second witness had heard Oberlies say he hoped the German submarines would sink a few troopships; that would frighten the Americans and teach them to stay at home and mind their own business. A third complained that on Sunday afternoons the old man sat on his front porch and played “Die Wacht am Rhein” on a slide-trombone, to the great annoyance of his neighbours. Here Nat Wheeler slapped his knee with a loud guffaw, and a titter ran through the courtroom. The defendant’s puffy red cheeks seemed fashioned by his Maker to give voice to that piercing instrument.

When asked if he had anything to say to these charges, the old man rose, threw back his shoulders, and cast