Claude would have said that he was a Christian. He believed in
God, and in the spirit of the four Gospels, and in the Sermon on
the Mount. He used to halt and stumble at “Blessed are the meek,”
until one day he happened to think that this verse was meant
exactly for people like Mahailey; and surely she was blessed!
VIII
On the Sunday after Christmas Claude and Ernest were walking
along the banks of Lovely Creek. They had been as far as Mr.
Wheeler’s timber claim and back. It was like an autumn afternoon,
so warm that they left their overcoats on the limb of a crooked
elm by the pasture fence. The fields and the bare tree-tops
seemed to be swimming in light. A few brown leaves still clung to
the bushy trees along the creek. In the upper pasture, more than
a mile from the house, the boys found a bittersweet vine that
wound about a little dogwood and covered it with scarlet berries.
It was like finding a Christmas tree growing wild out of doors.
They had just been talking about some of the books Claude had
brought home, and his history course. He was not able to tell
Ernest as much about the lectures as he had meant to, and he felt
that this was more Ernest’s fault than his own; Ernest was such a
literal-minded fellow. When they came upon the bittersweet, they
forgot their discussion and scrambled down the bank to admire the
red clusters on the woody, smoke-coloured vine, and its pale gold
leaves, ready to fall at a touch. The vine and the little tree it
honoured, hidden away in the cleft of a ravine, had escaped the
stripping winds, and the eyes of schoolchildren who sometimes
took a short cut home through the pasture. At its roots, the
creek trickled thinly along, black between two jagged crusts of
melting ice.
When they left the spot and climbed back to the level, Claude
again felt an itching to prod Ernest out of his mild and
reasonable mood.
“What are you going to do after a while, Ernest? Do you mean to
farm all your life?”
“Naturally. If I were going to learn a trade, I’d be at it before
now. What makes you ask that?”
“Oh, I don’t know! I suppose people must think about the future
sometime. And you’re so practical.”
“The future, eh?” Ernest shut one eye and smiled. “That’s a big
word. After I get a place of my own and have a good start, I’m
going home to see my old folks some winter. Maybe I’ll marry a
nice girl and bring her back.”
“Is that all?”
“That’s enough, if it turns out right, isn’t it?”
“Perhaps. It wouldn’t be for me. I don’t believe I can ever
settle down to anything. Don’t you feel that at this rate there
isn’t much in it?”
“In what?”
“In living at all, going on as we do. What do we get out of it?
