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

magazine. There could be no question of her pride in every detail. The disappointing thing was that she seemed more interested in the house than in him. These months when they could be together as much as they pleased, she treated merely as a period of time in which they were building a house.

Everything would be all right when they were married, Claude told himself. He believed in the transforming power of marriage, as his mother believed in the miraculous effects of conversion. Marriage reduced all women to a common denominator; changed a cool, self-satisfied girl into a loving and generous one. It was quite right that Enid should be unconscious now of everything that she was to be when she was his wife. He told himself he wouldn’t want it otherwise.

But he was lonely, all the same. He lavished upon the little house the solicitude and cherishing care that Enid seemed not to need. He stood over the carpenters urging the greatest nicety in the finish of closets and cupboards, the convenient placing of shelves, the exact joining of sills and casings. Often he stayed late in the evening, after the workmen with their noisy boots had gone home to supper. He sat down on a rafter or on the skeleton of the upper porch and quite lost himself in brooding, in anticipation of things that seemed as far away as ever. The dying light, the quiet stars coming out, were friendly and sympathetic. One night a bird flew in and fluttered wildly about among the partitions, shrieking with fright before it darted out into the dusk through one of the upper windows and found its way to freedom.

When the carpenters were ready to put in the staircase, Claude telephoned Enid and asked her to come and show them just what height she wanted the steps made. His mother had always had to climb stairs that were too steep. Enid stopped her car at the Frankfort High School at four o’clock and persuaded Gladys Farmer to drive out with her.

When they arrived they found Claude working on the lattice enclosure of the back porch. “Claude is like Jonah,” Enid laughed. “He wants to plant gourd vines here, so they will run over the lattice and make shade. I can think of other vines that might be more ornamental.”

Claude put down his hammer and said coaxingly: “Have you ever seen a gourd vine when it had something to climb on, Enid? You wouldn’t believe how pretty they are; big green leaves, and gourds and yellow blossoms hanging all over them at the same time. An old German woman who keeps a lunch counter at one of those stations on the road to Lincoln has them running up her back porch, and I’ve wanted to plant some ever since I first saw hers.”

Enid smiled indulgently. “Well, I suppose you’ll let me have clematis for the front porch, anyway? The men are getting ready to leave, so we’d better see about the steps.”

After the workmen had gone, Claude took the girls upstairs by the ladder. They emerged from a little entry into a large room which extended over both the front and back parlours. The carpenters called it “the pool hall.” There were two long windows, like doors, opening upon the porch roof, and in the sloping ceiling were two dormer windows, one looking north to the timber claim and the other south toward Lovely Creek. Gladys at once felt a singular pleasantness about this chamber, empty and unplastered as it was. “What a lovely room!” she exclaimed.

Claude took her up eagerly. “Don’t you think so? You see it’s my idea to have the second floor for ourselves, instead of cutting it up into little boxes as people usually do. We can come up here and forget the farm and the kitchen and all our troubles. I’ve made a big closet for each of us, and got everything just right. And now Enid wants to keep this room for preachers!”

Enid laughed. “Not only for preachers, Claude. For Gladys, when she comes to visit us⁠—you see she likes it⁠—and for your mother when she comes to spend a week and rest. I don’t think we ought to take the best room for ourselves.”

“Why not?” Claude argued hotly. “I’m building the whole house for ourselves. Come out on the porch roof, Gladys. Isn’t this fine for hot nights? I want to put a railing round and make this into a balcony, where we can have chairs and a hammock.”

Gladys sat down on the low windowsill. “Enid, you’d be foolish to keep this for a guest room. Nobody would ever enjoy it as much as you would. You can see the whole country from here.”

Enid smiled, but showed no sign of relenting. “Let’s wait and watch the sun go down. Be careful, Claude. It makes me nervous to see you lying there.”

He was stretched out on the edge of the roof, one leg hanging over, and his head pillowed on his arm. The flat fields turned red, the distant windmills flashed white, and little rosy clouds appeared in the sky above them.

“If I make this into a balcony,” Claude murmured, “the peak of the roof will always throw a shadow over it in the afternoon, and at night the stars will be right overhead. It will be a fine place to sleep in harvest time.”

“Oh, you could always come up here to sleep on a hot night,” Enid said quickly.

“It wouldn’t be the same.”

They sat watching the light die out of the sky, and Enid and Gladys drew close together as the coolness of the autumn evening came on. The three friends were thinking about the same thing; and yet, if by some sorcery each had begun to speak his thoughts aloud, amazement and bitterness would have fallen upon all. Enid’s reflections were the most blameless. The discussion about the guest room had reminded her of Brother Weldon. In September, on her way to Michigan