He had been to see Mrs. Erlich just before starting home for the
holidays, and found her making German Christmas cakes. She took
him into the kitchen and explained the almost holy traditions
that governed this complicated cookery. Her excitement and
seriousness as she beat and stirred were very pretty, Claude
thought. She told off on her fingers the many ingredients, but he
believed there were things she did not name: the fragrance of old
friendships, the glow of early memories, belief in wonder-working
rhymes and songs. Surely these were fine things to put into
little cakes! After Claude left her, he did something a Wheeler
didn’t do; he went down to O street and sent her a box of the
reddest roses he could find. In his pocket was the little note
she had written to thank him.
VII
It was beginning to grow dark when Claude reached the farm. While
Ralph stopped to put away the car, he walked on alone to the
house. He never came back without emotion,—try as he would to
pass lightly over these departures and returns which were all in
the day’s work. When he came up the hill like this, toward the
tall house with its lighted windows, something always clutched at
his heart. He both loved and hated to come home. He was always
disappointed, and yet he always felt the rightness of returning
to his own place. Even when it broke his spirit and humbled his
pride, he felt it was right that he should be thus humbled. He
didn’t question that the lowest state of mind was the truest, and
that the less a man thought of himself, the more likely he was to
be correct in his estimate.
Approaching the door, Claude stopped a moment and peered in at
the kitchen window. The table was set for supper, and Mahailey
was at the stove, stirring something in a big iron pot; cornmeal
mush, probably,—she often made it for herself now that her teeth
had begun to fail. She stood leaning over, embracing the pot with
one arm, and with the other she beat the stiff contents, nodding
her head in time to this rotary movement. Confused emotions
surged up in Claude. He went in quickly and gave her a bearish
hug.
Her face wrinkled up in the foolish grin he knew so well. “Lord,
how you scared me, Mr. Claude! A little more’n I’d ‘a’ had my
mush all over the floor. You lookin’ fine, you nice boy, you!”
He knew Mahailey was gladder to see him come home than any one
except his mother. Hearing Mrs. Wheeler’s wandering, uncertain
steps in the enclosed stairway, he opened the door and ran
halfway up to meet her, putting his arm about her with the almost
painful tenderness he always felt, but seldom was at liberty to
show. She reached up both hands and stroked his hair for a
moment, laughing as one does to a little boy, and telling him she
believed it was redder every time he came back.
“Have we got all the corn in, Mother?”
“No, Claude, we haven’t. You know we’re always behindhand. It’s
been fine, open weather for husking, too. But at least we’ve got
