One of Ours - Willa Cather (great book club books .TXT) 📗

up for her, and to pull on her rubbers, which kept slipping off at the heel. She was very kind to single him out and be so gracious to him, he thought. She even coaxed him to pose in his track clothes for the life class on Saturday morning, telling him that he had “a magnificent physique,” a compliment which covered him with confusion. But he posed, of course.

Claude looked forward to seeing Peachy Millmore, missed her if she were not in the alcove, found it quite natural that she should explain her absences to him⁠—tell him how often she washed her hair and how long it was when she uncoiled it.

One Friday in February Julius Erlich overtook Claude on the campus and proposed that they should try the skating tomorrow.

“Yes, I’m going out,” Claude replied. “I’ve promised to teach Miss Millmore to skate. Won’t you come along and help me?”

Julius laughed indulgently. “Oh, no! Some other time. I don’t want to break in on that.”

“Nonsense! You could teach her better than I.”

“Oh, I haven’t the courage!”

“What do you mean?”

“You know what I mean.”

“No, I don’t. Why do you always laugh about that girl, anyhow?”

Julius made a little grimace. “She wrote some awfully slushy letters to Phil Bowen, and he read them aloud at the frat house one night.”

“Didn’t you slap him?” Claude demanded, turning red.

“Well, I would have thought I would,” said Julius smiling, “but I didn’t. They were too silly to make a fuss about. I’ve been wary of the Georgia peach ever since. If you touched that sort of peach ever so lightly, it might remain in your hand.”

“I don’t think so,” replied Claude haughtily. “She’s only kindhearted.”

“Perhaps you’re right. But I’m terribly afraid of girls who are too kindhearted,” Julius confessed. He had wanted to drop Claude a word of warning for some time.

Claude kept his engagement with Miss Millmore. He took her out to the skating pond several times, indeed, though in the beginning he told her he feared her ankles were too weak. Their last excursion was made by moonlight, and after that evening Claude avoided Miss Millmore when he could do so without being rude. She was attractive to him no more. It was her way to subdue by clinging contact. One could scarcely call it design; it was a degree less subtle than that. She had already thus subdued a pale cousin in Atlanta, and it was on this account that she had been sent North. She had, Claude angrily admitted, no reserve⁠—though when one first met her she seemed to have so much. Her eager susceptibility presented not the slightest temptation to him. He was a boy with strong impulses, and he detested the idea of trifling with them. The talk of the disreputable men his father kept about the place at home, instead of corrupting him, had given him a sharp disgust for sensuality. He had an almost Hippolytean pride in candour.

X

The Erlich family loved anniversaries, birthdays, occasions. That spring Mrs. Erlich’s first cousin, Wilhelmina Schroeder-Schatz, who sang with the Chicago Opera Company, came to Lincoln as soloist for the May Festival. As the date of her engagement approached, her relatives began planning to entertain her. The Matinee Musical was to give a formal reception for the singer, so the Erlichs decided upon a dinner. Each member of the family invited one guest, and they had great difficulty in deciding which of their friends would be most appreciative of the honour. There were to be more men than women, because Mrs. Erlich remembered that cousin Wilhelmina had never been partial to the society of her own sex.

One evening when her sons were revising their list, Mrs. Erlich reminded them that she had not as yet named her guest. “For me,” she said with decision, “you may put down Claude Wheeler.”

This announcement was met with groans and laughter.

“You don’t mean it, Mother,” the oldest son protested. “Poor old Claude wouldn’t know what it was all about⁠—and one stick can spoil a dinner party.”

Mrs. Erlich shook her finger at him with conviction. “You will see; your cousin Wilhelmina will be more interested in that boy than in any of the others!”

Julius thought if she were not too strongly opposed she might still yield her point. “For one thing, Mother, Claude hasn’t any dinner clothes,” he murmured. She nodded to him. “That has been attended to, Herr Julius. He is having some made. When I sounded him, he told me he could easily afford it.”

The boys said if things had gone as far as that, they supposed they would have to make the best of it, and the eldest wrote down “Claude Wheeler” with a flourish.

If the Erlich boys were apprehensive, their anxiety was nothing to Claude’s. He was to take Mrs. Erlich to Madame Schroeder-Schatz’s recital, and on the evening of the concert, when he appeared at the door, the boys dragged him in to look him over. Otto turned on all the lights, and Mrs. Erlich, in her new black lace over white satin, fluttered into the parlour to see what figure her escort cut.

Claude pulled off his overcoat as he was bid, and presented himself in the sooty blackness of fresh broadcloth. Mrs. Erlich’s eyes swept his long black legs, his smooth shoulders, and lastly his square red head, affectionately inclined toward her. She laughed and clapped her hands.

“Now all the girls will turn round in their seats to look, and wonder where I got him!”

Claude began to bestow her belongings in his overcoat pockets; opera glasses in one, fan in another. She put a lorgnette into her little bag, along with her powder-box, handkerchief and smelling salts⁠—there was even a little silver box of peppermint drops, in case she might begin to cough. She drew on her long gloves, arranged a lace scarf over her hair, and at last was ready to have the evening cloak which Claude held wound about her. When she reached up and took his arm, bowing to